STEPHEN Bradley felt ‘disrespected’ by the FAI’s attempt at interviewing him to become Ireland head coach.
Bradley spoke to Off The Ball about his poor treatment from the FAI when he had hoped he may have a chance of landing the biggest job in Irish football.
“I want to manage at the highest level.”
On #InnerDrive Stephen Bradley and his team reveal how close he came to becoming the Irish national team manager, and why negotiations broke… pic.twitter.com/dwP7i88Ttx
— Off The Ball (@offtheball) June 11, 2025
He recalled: “Would I like to manage the senior national team of this country? Of course I would.
“I was approached through back channels at the start asking is it something that i’d be interested in and having that conversation.
“Obviously the answer was yes. So a meeting was set up between myself, Marc Canham and Jonathan Hill.
“Unfortunately both Marc and Jonathan were 15 minutes late for the meeting, so I left.
“That probably summed up how serious the interest was, for me to have the job. I found it disrespectful and not good enough to be honest with you.
“If I was someone that they were really serious about having that job they wouldn’t have been late for that meeting.”
Canham and Hill came under fire during the process of hiring a new national team manager as it took over 231 days for the FAI to replace Stephen Kenny with Heimir Hallgrimsson.
Canham has since quit his role as FAI Chief Football Officer but will remain in the position for the ‘short term’ until a handover is completed.
Bradley’s assistant manager Glenn Cronin added: “When he spoke to me about it, he initially said to me ‘You’re going to kill me. I came off the call’ and I said right, why?
“He said ‘they left me waiting’ whatever amount of time it was and I thought good. That’s how I felt really and it’s not an arrogance, it’s respect.
“They wouldn’t leave Jose Mourinho waiting 10 minutes. Either you are there on merit and they respect you like everyone else or they don’t.
“He’s no less valued than anyone else so I think it was the right thing to do.
Bradley has made it known in the past he harbours ambitions to one day go on to bigger and better things.
He said: “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I want to manage at the highest level. I want to manage at the highest level possible and that’s my ambition, that’s my hunger, that’s my desire.
“Has there been opportunities in the last few years? Yeah there’s been opportunities but the personal circumstances don’t allow for that.
“Please God in the future we get good news and the whole picture becomes clearer.
“In the last two and a half years there’s no job in the world that would have taken me away from my family situation, so it’s irrelevant.
Bradley’s son Josh was daignosed with leukemia in 2022. Stephen remembered the day of the diagnose, saying: “Right at that moment, your world stops, it changes you.”
For Stephen it hurt even more as his mother had died from colon cancer in 2016.
The former Ireland underage international’s managerial opportunities were limited due to the diagnosis as appropriate medical attention must be readily available.
