Nigel Worthington

Nigel Worthington (born 4 November 1961 in Ballymena, County Antrim) is a former Northern Ireland international footballer and ex-manager.

He was manager of the Northern Ireland national team from 2007 until after their final Euro 2012 qualifying campaign match against Italy in October 2011.

As a player, he was a left full back and occasional left midfielder, playing the majority of his club football for Sheffield Wednesday. As an international player, he is Northern Ireland's 9th most capped player with 66 appearances. At both Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United Worthington played under Howard Wilkinson who would be a major influence on Worthington's own managerial style. Bryan Hamilton was also important to Worthington's career, since he made Worthington his international captain when manager of Northern Ireland and also invited him to Norwich to assist him when he (Hamilton) was manager at Carrow Road.

Worthington began his managerial career as player-manager of Blackpool in 1997 before he succeeded Hamilton as manager of Norwich City in 2000. He guided Norwich to the Premier League in the 2003–04 season but left just over two years afterwards, having failed to keep them in the top-flight in 2005. He was briefly caretaker manager of Leicester City in 2007 prior to starting as manager of Northern Ireland, from which he stepped down in 2011.