‘Like a movie script’: Michael McArdle backs Northern Ireland to make history | Northern Ireland women’s football team

For seven and a half years, Michael McArdle worked in the construction industry while playing semi-professional football, studying for a degree in building services engineering and raising three young children together with his wife. Any leftover earnings he put into funding his football coaching badges.

Eventually he took a big risk and decided to take “probably a 300% drop in salary” and…