Seamus Coleman Trains with Killybegs as GAA Return Calls After 17 Years at Everton
Seamus Coleman, without a football club since leaving Everton at the end of the 2025-26 season, has been keeping fit by training with Killybegs GAC — the Gaelic football club in his home parish in County Donegal.
The 37-year-old ended a 17-year stay at Everton when he announced his departure on May 15, 2026 (RTÉ). Two days later, he made his final home appearance, coming off the bench in the 88th minute of a Premier League match Everton went on to lose (RTÉ). Coleman arrived at Goodison Park from Sligo Rovers in 2009, having chosen professional football over the locally favoured Gaelic game at the age of 17 (Everton FC).
Now the road may be curving back. Coleman has said in the past that he wants to play Gaelic football for Killybegs after his professional career ends (Donegal Live). That career is now over at Everton, and while he remains captain of the Republic of Ireland national team and featured in June 2025 international friendlies, he has not signed for a new club (BBC Sport).
Killybegs travelled to Four Masters on a Sunday afternoon for their Donegal Senior Football Championship opener — the local club scene's top-tier county competition. Coleman did not line out (BBC Sport). His presence at training has naturally raised hopes in the parish that one of football's most enduring right-backs might yet pull on the Killybegs jersey.
The two sports share a county but not much else. Professional football — soccer — runs on a club-and-international calendar of leagues and tournaments. Gaelic football, by contrast, is an amateur code organised around parish and county, its players rooted in the communities they represent. The Donegal Senior Football Championship is the county-level competition where clubs from across Donegal compete for the title of best in the county.
For fans, the appeal is obvious: a player who left Killybegs as a teenager for the Premier League might yet come home to play for the parish. He is training, staying sharp, and no longer tied to a football contract. What he is not, at least yet, is a confirmed Killybegs player. The championship opener came and went without him taking the field.
Coleman's story has always carried that dual thread. He built a Premier League career spanning more than a decade and a half, earned the Republic of Ireland captaincy, and became a figure Everton fans could build an identity around. But Killybegs, and Donegal, never let go of the claim.
Whether the next chapter is a professional contract elsewhere or a pair of boots on a Donegal field is still an open question. For now, Coleman is a footballer without a club, and a Killybegs man back where it started.
