Firebrand Damien Duff on the verge of his greatest accomplishment | OneFootball

Damien Duff is a two-time Premier League winner, but the former Chelsea winger is one step away from arguably his greatest accomplishment in football.

The 45-year-old is the head coach of League of Ireland side Shelbourne, who lead the Premier Division by two points heading into tonight’s final game of the season.

The permutations are very simple: beat Derry City away and they are the champions. Anything less than that and they give Shamrock Rovers, who entertain Waterford FC at Tallaght Stadium, the opportunity to retain their crown.

It would be a truly extraordinary feat for Duff in his first senior managerial role. Shels were in the doldrums in the not so distant past playing in front of a few hundred fans as the once successful club languished in the First Division. Prior to Duff’s appointment in 2021, they had spent 11 of the previous 14 years in the second tier.

Now they are on the cusp of denying Rovers a fifth consecutive league title and a first of their own since 2006. So how did ‘Duffer’ get to this point?

In July 2015, Duff made what was supposed to be a fairytale return to Ireland, joining Shamrock Rovers midway through the season while donating his wages to charity. By this point in his playing career injuries had taken their toll so we only got to see him play nine times for the Hoops, and he retired at the end of the campaign.

It was at Rovers where he took his first tentative steps into coaching, working with the under-15s. He didn’t take to it immediately; asked to coach the wingers in the squad, he later admitted was unable to offer meaningful guidance on something that was so instinctual to him as a player. “I was crap, it hurt my ego,” he said.

Duff was like a fish out of water in that environment, but not for long. He worked extra hard to get good at a new profession that he this week said doesn’t come naturally to him. Determined to get the best out of his precocious prospects, he organised 6AM training sessions, something that didn’t go down well with parents. Aware that contact time with the ball is the most important part of a young footballer’s development, he called the reaction to his methods “dinosaur mentality”.

“I get slaughtered for it in this country for training my lads five times a week, training half six in the morning doing double sessions and your back at half six at night,” he told RTE at the time. “You have to train five times a week … But most teams train twice or three times a week, so that’s a problem already.”

The following year Duff took on a coaching role with the Republic of Ireland U15s and joined the first-team coaching staff at Rovers. Over time he built up enough of a reputation to catch the attention of Celtic, who hired him as part of the coaching staff for their reserve team in 2019.

The former Newcastle United and Fulham player’s methods were held in high esteem at the Glaswegian outfit, and he was promoted to first team coach when Neil Lennon returned for his second stint a manager. His country called yet again in 2020 when Stephen Kenny was made Republic of Ireland manager, and he joined up as his assistant.

Two months later it was announced that Duff would also become head coach of the U17’s team at Shelbourne in conjunction with his national team commitments, setting him on the path to tonight’s crucial title decider.

A former coach who worked in the club’s academy at the time recalls that Duff was “extremely passionate” about his job and had an “unbelievable rapport with the players”. Despite the fact that he was one of Irish football’s biggest stars, he “spoke to us like he was just another coach”.

“I knew he was the best coach in the country from just watching some of his sessions,” the coach tells The Football Faithful. Evidently the Shelbourne hierarchy felt the same way.

In 2021 the Dublin club sacked their manager, Ian Morris, who had just guided them to promotion, and replaced him with Duff. It was a bold move, but one that has paid off many times over.

Shels would’ve been expected to flirt with relegation upon returning to the Premier Division. Instead they reached the FAI Cup final in Duff’s first season, qualified for Europe in his second, and can win the league in his third.

Understandably, he’s a massive presence in the league, to the point that he overshadows almost everything else. Next to no one has put much focus on Rover’s bid for an unprecedented fifth title in a row or Stephen Kenny’s incredible redemption arc at St Patrick’s Athletic after failing in the Ireland job.

Duff is endlessly quotable; it would be impossible to fit every one of his notable remarks in this piece. He himself says he’s not trying to garner headlines, but he doesn’t help himself with soundbites that reporters eat up. He’s pure box office, which has been great for the League of Ireland, but his mouth has gotten him into trouble at times.

Earlier this year Duff launched a scathing attack on his former employers, the FAI. “I would – how would I word it – raze Abbotstown to the ground because it’s the most uninviting, unenthusiastic workplace, not in world football but in the world,” he said of the association’s headquarters. “So I’d level it and I would probably sack 90 percent of the workforce.”

Those comments drew heavy criticism and he apologised for them, admitting they were “deeply disrespectful” to the staff. “You are all working hard for the benefit of Irish football. Trying to pay bills, support families and pay mortgages and, frankly, it was a ridiculous comment.”

Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard when you’re a public figure who faces the media every week and willing to speak your mind unabashed. Some critics have argued that Damien Duff the manager is a persona, a mini-Jose Mourinho act he puts on. Only he will know if that is really the case, but it’s clear he has no problem breaking a few eggs on his journey.

“To get where I want to go, I will fall out with anyone. I’m happy to do that, as you’ve seen,” he said at his pre-match press conference on Thursday.

“At times, I don’t like the person you become when you go over the white line. I think you need to have that edge to have success, as an individual or as team.”

One might expect Shel’s style of play to reflect that of the manager during his playing days, but his side are an attritional team, willing to dig out victory by any means possible. Six teams (i.e. just over half the top flight) have scored more goals than them this season, but they do boast the best defensive record.

It’s not been pretty, but it has been effective, for the most part. Shelbourne don’t have the strongest squad in the league nor the biggest finances. Duff has squeezed every last ounce of his players to get them to this point.

A couple of months ago it even seemed like they would stroll to the title. They enjoyed a comfortable lead at the summit, while Rovers were, to everyone’s surprise, miles behind. A run of one win in ten games has made it much tighter than it ought to be, but Shels regained form at just the right time, winning their last two matches to stay on top.

If they don’t get over the line tonight, then many will look back at their chaotic 3-2 defeat to St. Pat’s as the moment the title really slipped away from them. Duff’s men managed to recover from two goals down to level matters with ten minutes remaining. There was pandemonium in the stands at Tolka Park, which spilled over onto the sidelines as Duff tussled with Brian Gartland, one of Kenny’s assistants.

Shels just needed to professionally see out the game and hold on for a valuable point, but substitute Al-Amin Kazeem scored the winner in the 89th minute. It was a brutal blow that threatened to derail their title charge, but more importantly it showed up their inability to keep their heads in the white heat of battle.

Afterwards Duff provided a quote that summed him up. The interviewer asks him: All that emotion, can you try and just calm it a bit maybe and might that help you towards a result?”

“Emotion?” he responds. “I love it.”

If Shelbourne beat Derry at the Brandywell for one of the more unlikely title wins in Irish football history on Friday, expect the emotion to pour forth from Duff and those who have joined him in the trenches this season.

“Winning the league would be the pinnacle,” he said this week. “It would wipe the floor with everything but it’s not about me winning, it’s the players. We help them out all we can, give them the detail, try to motivate and organise them but they are going out over the white line.

“If there’s a trophy in the Shelbourne dressing room on Friday night, it belongs to the players, it’s not mine. It would be great but it’s their achievement.”

Derry City vs Shelbourne kicks off at 7.45pm Irish time and will be aired live on RTE 2 in Ireland and streamed on LOI TV internationally.

Read – From Italia 90 to Euro 2016: Ireland’s greatest ever kits

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