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Jim has had a successful career as both a player and manager. He has transitioned from coaching Gaelic Football to coaching soccer. Jim became the first All-Ireland winning coach to also coach a professional soccer team. He has had stints with Celtic and Beijing Sinobo Guoan FC as he looks to develop his managerial career.
Jim McGuinness was only a teenager when he was part of a Donegal squad that claimed the county’s first All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. He was the coach when the club won their first ever Donegal Senior Club Championship title. Jim has represented his Province on several occasions winning two Railway Cup Medals and has also represented his country in the International Compromise Rules Series against Australia, which Ireland won.
Jim was the manager of the Donegal Under-21 Football Team that won the Provincial Championship for the first time in fifteen years and reached the All-Ireland Final. In July of that year, he was appointed Donegal Senior Football Team Manager. He has overseen a Donegal team that has won two consecutive Ulster Senior Football Championship titles and guided his native county to win the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final. Donegal’s victory under Jim’s management is Donegal’s second ever All-Ireland Senior Championship win in more than a hundred and twenty years.
His achievements have also been recognised internationally, earning the admiration of the golfer and Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley and the Glasgow Celtic football manager Neil Lennon.
Jim was invited to assist Glasgow Celtic in Scotland and is the first Gaelic football inter-county manager to have been offered a role at a professional sports team abroad. He then took up a coaching role with Beijing Sinobo Guoan and was head coach of Charlotte Independence in the USL Championship.
In his book Until Victory Always, Jim gives a highly personal account of his years at the helm of the Donegal team and was the winner of Bord Gáis Energy Sports Book of the Year.
Jim is a pundit with Sky Sports and a columnist with the Irish Times. He has lectured in Sports Coaching and Sport Psychology at Limavady College, Co. Derry, Northern Ireland.
