Celtic Roars Towards Champions League Under Martin O’Neill
Martin O’Neill stood back on Tuesday night and watched a scene he knows by heart, yet hasn’t lived in a generation – a Celtic side roaring towards the Champions League.
Twenty-two years have passed since he last prowled a technical area in this competition. By this time next week, he could be doing it again.
A manager out of time – but still in charge
Some of the players who helped dismantle LASK in the play-off first leg weren’t even born when O’Neill’s Celtic last mixed it with Europe’s elite, grinding out a goalless draw against AC Milan at Celtic Park in 2004. That feels like ancient history. O’Neill, somehow, doesn’t.
He is 74 now. Earlier this month he was in hospital for what the club described as a “small procedure”, missing a routine Scottish Premiership win at Kilmarnock while he recovered. For many, that would be a gentle hint to slow down.
He has ignored it.
Back on the touchline, he remains the central force at Celtic – the voice, the authority, the man whose decisions still shape everything. Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham run the training ground, but the big calls still belong to O’Neill.
“Martin is a manager,” Scott Brown said on Sportsound, the emphasis heavy on that last word. “The times have changed but it is amazing that he has moved with them.
“See the calmness when he talks on radio or TV – he just oozes confidence. You can imagine what he does to fans, to us, to players, he oozes that confidence and that calmness as well.”
That calm has seeped into this team.
LASK arrive in form – and leave shell-shocked
LASK came to Glasgow as Austrian champions and in strong form, not as tourists. They created chances in the east end, asked questions, and for spells looked every inch a side capable of turning this tie into a grind.
Then Celtic started hitting the top corner.
Benjamin Nygren broke them first, thundering the opener high into the net. It was a finish that turned a tight, nervous evening into something else entirely – a reminder that this Celtic side has a cutting edge to match its composure.
The pressure built. The stadium grew louder. LASK wobbled.
Camilo Duran, a summer signing still learning the rhythms of this club, then produced a moment that will live with him. A superb volley, lashed in before half-time, doubled the lead and shifted the night from hopeful to electric.
After the break, the Colombian forward went again. Nygren slipped him in and Duran smashed home his second, a ruthless third goal that blew the tie wide open and left LASK staring at the wreckage of a game that had started with promise.
Three stunning goals. One foot, very firmly, on the Champions League ladder.
O’Neill’s second act
O’Neill did not celebrate like a man who thinks the job is done. He rarely does. He knows what Europe can do to a complacent side and he has lived too much of this competition to indulge in early triumph.
But this is another extraordinary chapter in a comeback few saw coming.
When Brendan Rodgers resigned last October, Celtic turned to O’Neill as a steady hand, a familiar face to guide them through turbulence. He came out of retirement, not once but twice across two interim spells, and somehow turned a patchwork season into a league and cup double that felt, as Pat Nevin put it on Match of the Day, “out of this world”.
He had earned the right to walk away on a high. Instead, he stayed. Earlier this summer he agreed to take the job permanently, to build again rather than simply rescue.
“Sometimes it’s hard to see what Martin does for the team, but he seems to be able to mould a side,” Nevin said. “The great managers do that. It’s understanding what players work with other types of players and getting the best out of them.
“The job he did last season was out of this world. Whatever happens, he will always be a legend of the club, but if they have a good run in Europe, that’s fantastic.”
That is the tantalising prospect now. A 74-year-old manager, fresh from a hospital bed, guiding a new generation towards nights he once made routine in this stadium.
The tie with LASK is not over. O’Neill will make sure his players know it. But if Celtic finish this job and stride back into the Champions League, the old soundtrack of European nights at Celtic Park will return with a familiar figure at its centre – the same manager, a very different era, and a story that refuses to end.
