McArdle was appointed Northern Ireland manager after Tanya Oxtoby stepped down to become first-team manager at Newcastle United.<\/p>\n
Following Oxtoby’s departure, Kris Lindsay was introduced as interim manager for the opening two World Cup qualifiers. <\/p>\n
McArdle was head of elite women’s football at the Scottish IFA and managed the Scottish national side on an interim basis last year.<\/p>\n
“I am hugely proud and excited to be here,” McArdle continued.<\/p>\n
“I know a lot about the players, the squad and the exciting pieces of potential both of the senior players and also the young, exciting talent which is growing through the pipeline.<\/p>\n
“That is why my skills align – I develop players and coaches and I develop myself through that.”<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland are going through a period of transition with many key figures retiring in recent years and younger players breaking into the squad.<\/p>\n
McArdle added that it is key to assess the younger players and that he will attend the upcoming U17 European Championships in Northern Ireland in May.<\/p>\n
“The pipeline of the younger player’s is crucial,” he continued.<\/p>\n
“In over a month, I will be here a lot to see the under-17s play, see the future and also align that future to the senior team.<\/p>\n
“A lot of my work will be aligning what the underage coaches do to the national team.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McArdle was appointed Northern Ireland manager after Tanya Oxtoby stepped down to become first-team manager at Newcastle United.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-553458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}