Press to success: Jim McGuinness and Donegal could look to overwhelm teams

Jim McGuinness might not actually be aware of it but he may have already given a seriously revealing insight into how he plans to approach 2026. 

Speaking after Donegal’s NFL win over Kerry in Ballyshannon, he was asked about any notable trends over the course of the first two rounds of league action. 

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It was always going to be fascinating to see how McGuinness would look to evolve all of that this season, but stung by criticism of how Donegal approached last term’s All-Ireland final clash with Kerry, there’s even more intrigue in what he’s cooking up for summer. 

The Donegal manager commented after at Fr Tierney Park that the two things standing out for him so far are the high press and sides looking to chase two-pointers.

The two-pointer is an obvious one but an increase in high pressing is something that McGuinness himself could well decide to really chase. 

The new playing rules aren’t so new in 2026 and acclimatised to what was a monumental shift in 2025, Donegal could well set that trend, and indeed bar, when the serious business of championship does begin. 

But McGuinness didn’t pull any kind of tactical curtain back in his exchanges with the media a fortnight ago after their win over Jack O’Connor’s outfit. 

However, six years ago, speaking on the Modern Soccer Coach podcast, his take on how he might approach Gaelic football if he ever returned, with the benefit of so much hindsight since, makes for fascinating listening. 

McGuinness, when he had no skin in the game, and probably never envisaged that he would have again, was seriously candid.  

He waxed lyrical about pressing in soccer and his observations working under Roger Schmidt was that it indeed could be sustained for 90 minutes or, in Gaelic football’s case, 70.  

Basically, to do that, McGuinness said at the time, you needed the right personnel. 

Talking with his Donegal manager’s hat on after that league win over Kerry, McGuinness said that there had to be aggression in how sides press but a serious level of discipline also. 

“You’ve got to get there,” he said after in Ballyshannon. “You’ve got to be intensive. You’ve got to be disciplined as well.

“There’s no point getting people in a really good spot and giving away frees”. 

Back in 2020, long before the Football Review Committtee’s sweeping revamp of Gaelic football, McGuinness was talking purely about a soccer philosophy. 

But given how the FRC changes have impacted football in just one short championship season, it’s going to be fascinating to see how managers approach ‘season two’ in that seismic change. 

Back to the high press. Not being able to pass straight back to the goalkeeper from a kickout means the oppostion can push up in ballsy fashion and and chase what the coaching gurus are now calling ‘high-value turnovers’, in really attractive positions. 

Shane O’Donnell’s hounding of Sean O’Shea, which resulted in the Kerry man overcarriyng, is a model example of that and it was graft that gifted Donegal an easy score from the resulting free. 

Here’s McGuinness’ previous take on high pressing in soccer and how it needs a certain kind of athlete to deliver the collective output required to see it through from first whistle to last. 

“Roger Schmidt, the levels I’d seen, the heat in Beijing, I wondered if it was even possible to press the game for 90 minutes. 

“Even now, coaches and players will say it can’t be done. But it was proved to me in Beijing it can be done. 

“If you’re recruiting athletes and people with the right attitude and mentality where you’re aiming to be as dynamic, aggressive and explosive as possible, there really isn’t a ceiling”.  

Sound familiar? 

Much more guarded but hinting at that exact same thing in the Aodh Ruadh clubhouse, McGuinness says Donegal’s approach to all of that “will depend on who we have available”. 

It’s the Red Bull model in soccer and it’s again something McGuinness has talked openly about in the past.

But it’s one thing hypothasising about that type of crosspolanisation of tactics from one code to another. 

And in practice, when one of those codes is still amatuer on the levels that really count, like rest and recovery, that task becomes even more difficult. 

But again, probably feeling safe in the knowledge he’d never actually be in the position to put that ambitious and exciting vision to the test, McGuinness went into great detail on how it could be executed. 

“This is where analytics and GPS data come in,” he said on the transferring of philosophies from soccer to Gaelic. 

Again, you have to remember, McGuinness was speaking back in 2020.  

Gaelic football was, as a spectacle, deep in the doldrums. And, of course, teams were, more often than not, coughing up the opposition kickout. 

And going back to the goalkeeper, if a defender did feel he might be hemmed in, was still an option. 

Still,  that old shooting of the breeze by McGuinness somehow manages to sound so fresh and innovative in the here and now. 

“The best model of how all of that is applied is the Red Bull model,” he’d continue. “I was in New York for a week, and they talk about weapons. Players simply have to have certain weapons. 

“If you don’t have speed and you don’t have power you aren’t going to make it with any of the Red Bull teams.

“We probably didn’t have that with Donegal back in 2011. We’d a few players that had gotten a lot of criticism for being lazy. 

“But all those same guys eventually become the ones that were actually leading the gameplan over the next four years. So it can be developed if you have the right mentality and approach”.

He added: “We pushed really hard with Donegal but we had the natural days recovery in between. We would have trained Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. But we’d the gaps in between for gym and S&C.   

“But you need a pre-season under the belt. You need to build up that robustness and intensity where it then becomes about maintenance. The games themselves are then brilliant. 

“And if you’re playing a high-pressing game, you’re getting your workouts within the games”.

In terms of just how far you can push all of that, he explained: “Burnout, is that a physical or psychological thing? 

“If the right culture is in place and people are there because they want to be there, I don’t think that’s an issue. 

“There was a lot of stuff out there when I was with Donegal, it was almost as if we’d the whip out at training. 

“That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Don’t get me wrong, we pushed them harder than they were ever pushed. 

“But as we joined the dots between that and what we wanted to do on the pitch; when they saw the trade-off there, they bought into it one hundred percent. Once we were at that point every single night on the training pitch was simply a joy. 

“We’d 30 or so guys and all they wanted to do was empty absolutely everything they had knowing they’d be one or two percent further on because of that. That is an amazing place to be. For me, there is no burnout in that situation. 

“But if it’s negative and you’re negative with the players, they can then become under pressure, under-appreciated and feel like they are being driven into the ground. 

“That can become a psychological burden and maybe then that’s interpreted and feels like ‘burnout’.” 

Only time will tell, and maybe I’ve gone down a rabbit hole that, in the end, bears little or no resemblance to what Donegal do decide to bring to the table later on in the campaign. 

Regardless, it’s exciting to know that so much potential now exists because of the rule changes.