Celtic's Title Triumph and Martin O’Neill's New Era
At 4.47pm on May 16th, the photograph on the phone captures a strangely gentle scene at Celtic Park. Martin O’Neill, 74 years old and supposedly just the interim man, stands in goal in an old-school tracksuit, laughing as his grandchildren scuff tame shots at him from a few yards out. The stadium is quiet now. The chaos has drained away.
Scroll back an hour and a bit, though, and the previous image tells the real story.
At 2.30pm, the same goalmouth is a riot of bodies and noise. Callum Osmand has just rammed in Celtic’s third against Hearts, the goal that seals the Scottish Premiership title. Osmand himself is nowhere to be seen in the picture, swallowed by a surge of players, staff and supporters – some bare-chested, all delirious – who have poured onto the pitch.
On the turf nearby, Hearts players are on their knees or frozen where they stand, hands on heads. Sixty-six years without a title, and they were three minutes from ending it. Three minutes from what, in the shorthand of 2026, would be called a Mayo moment. Then Daizen Maeda ripped it away.
Celtic’s 14th championship in 15 seasons sounds routine on paper. It was anything but. Hearts’ unlikely charge, the Rodgers–O’Neill–Nancy–O’Neill managerial hopscotch and Rangers stumbling through another muddled campaign turned this one into a drama that gripped the country.
In the middle of it all stood O’Neill, being asked about fairytales and doubles and whether the upcoming Scottish Cup final against Dunfermline and Neil Lennon would be his last day in the job. The pitch invasion, the missing final whistle amid the Parkhead pandemonium, Hearts players walking straight out of the stadium in full kit rather than face the celebrations – none of that sat on his shoulders. Celtic apologised formally the next day; the apology has largely faded from memory.
What hasn’t, at least around O’Neill, is the emotion. He spoke of the title giving him “a reason to live”. There was even talk of a statue.
The twist came later. The whistle hadn’t blown on his Celtic career either.
Twenty-six days after that afternoon, the club announced O’Neill as permanent manager on a one-year deal with an option for another. The reaction was split: amazement, joy, and a fair bit of unease about what this said of Celtic’s long-term planning. The club and its support have been divided for years; O’Neill knew it, which is why he hammered away at the theme of unity in those Hearts post-match interviews.
Thirty-seven days on from title day, Celtic returned to Parkhead for a pre-season friendly against Middlesbrough. O’Neill, in his programme notes, called that last visit “dramatic and thrilling”. The setting on this July afternoon looked similar – sun on the stands, the manager in his tracksuit – but the mood had shifted.
Only around 6,000 Celtic supporters turned up. Some blamed holiday season, some the opposition, but a clear strand of it was disillusionment with the club’s direction. That sat awkwardly alongside the fact that, as reported three weeks earlier, 99.5 per cent of season-ticket holders had renewed. The commitment is there. The contentment is not.
Two notable faces were missing. Kelechi Iheanacho, scorer of the season-shaping, highly contentious 90+9-minute penalty at Motherwell three days before the Hearts game, had chosen Bursaspor in Turkey’s second tier over a new deal in Glasgow. Maeda, the man who broke Hearts’ hearts, was on his way to Ipswich Town.
Brendan Rodgers, watching from a distance, would recognise the pattern. Kyogo Furuhashi gone. Nicolas Kühn gone. Adam Idah gone. Celtic fans certainly did. Many understood why the club baulked at Iheanacho’s wages, but the wider sense of a squad being unpicked lingered. This is Glasgow; within a week a rumour was doing the rounds that recruitment rows had even made O’Neill consider walking away.
He didn’t. Last Saturday, there he was again on the touchline, this time in front of more than 20,000 for a glamour pre-season meeting with AC Milan. And there, too, was Camilo Duran.
The Colombian striker, signed from Qarabag after scoring against Benfica in last season’s Champions League, had already shown a glimpse of what he can bring with a neat finish against Middlesbrough. By the time Milan left town, Duran had three goals in three pre-season outings and had given O’Neill something he badly needed: evidence that there is life after Maeda.
The reinforcement did not stop there. Within days, Celtic added another centre-forward, Kasper Høgh, for around €13million – close to the fee banked for Maeda. Høgh, who struck twice in Bodo/Glimt’s 3-1 win over Manchester City in last season’s Champions League, arrives with the right kind of scars and stories.
If he and Duran can score at that level, they should, on paper, have enough to trouble Dundee on Monday night, then Kilmarnock, Falkirk, Aberdeen and St Mirren. Those are Celtic’s first five league fixtures. None of those clubs finished in Scotland’s top five last season.
It is a kind opening stretch, the sort that should let O’Neill juggle the domestic start with a home-and-away Champions League qualifier in mid-August. Celtic have stumbled at that hurdle before – Kairat Almaty last year left Rodgers furious – and the margin for error is thin. Selling remains central to the club’s economic model; projected departures such as Arne Engels underline that. If those exits are matched with smart, timely arrivals, though, there is the chance to build early momentum instead of scrambling from behind.
That sense of cautious optimism feels a long way from last October and the “toxic atmosphere” cited by Dermot Desmond. The scepticism has not vanished. It will not, until this squad proves it can do more than just turn up in Europe.
All of this unfolds with a month of the transfer window still to run before it closes on August 31st. Across the city, Rangers have been far busier and know they cannot afford a repeat of last season’s erratic recruitment.
The symmetry is striking. Hearts’ manager at Parkhead on that fraught May afternoon was Derek McInnes. He is now in the Ibrox dugout. Hearts’ captain and goalscorer that day, Lawrence Shankland, has also crossed the divide. So has Cammy Devlin, the midfielder voted Hearts’ player of the season. A maroon core, repurposed in blue, and expected to bring the hardness Rangers have lacked.
McInnes is Rangers’ sixth permanent manager in five years, their third in 12 months. Russell Martin and Danny Röhl never quite fit in the brown brogues. McInnes, a former player, looks and feels like a Rangers manager. That will not buy him much time. Three of the last four seasons have yielded no trophies; expectation is loaded and immediate. His road begins at Tannadice on Friday night, and it needs to be a march, not a stroll.
His exit from Hearts opened the door for Wouter Vrancken at Tynecastle. The Belgian has had a brutal introduction: two games, two defeats, both to Sturm Graz in a Champions League qualifier. Recreating the raw energy that dragged Hearts into a title race last season will be a serious test for both coach and club.
They pushed Celtic right to the edge. They dragged neutrals into Scottish football’s story. Whether they can summon that again, without their manager, their captain and their midfield driving force, is one of the great unknowns of the new campaign.
The calendar has already marked the end point. May 16th, 2027, is once again scheduled as the final day of the season.
Martin O’Neill’s grandchildren should probably circle it. So should everyone else.
