Martin O’Neill Returns to Champions League Glory with Celtic
Martin O’Neill stood on the touchline at Celtic Park on Tuesday night, 22 years removed from his last dance with the Champions League. By this time next week, he could be planning for its anthem again.
The scale of that gap is staggering. Some of the players who delivered an unexpectedly emphatic play-off win over LASK were not even born when O’Neill last prowled a Champions League technical area – a goalless group-stage draw with AC Milan under the lights in 2004.
Now he is 74. Earlier this month he was in hospital for what the club described as a “small procedure”, forced to sit out a comprehensive Scottish Premiership victory at Kilmarnock while he recovered.
Yet here he is, back in his natural habitat, still the unmistakable heartbeat of Celtic. The figurehead. The decision-maker. The man whose fingerprints are all over last season’s domestic double and this season’s sharp, confident start.
On the training pitch, Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham run the drills and shape the sessions. O’Neill runs everything else.
“Martin is a manager,” former Celtic midfielder Scott Brown said on Sportsound. “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.”
LASK arrive in form, leave in pieces
LASK, champions of Austria and in fine form, did not arrive in Glasgow to make up the numbers. They carved out openings in the east end, asked questions of Celtic’s defence and, for spells, looked every inch a side used to winning.
Then the game broke open.
Benjamin Nygren took aim and ripped a shot into the top corner to ignite Celtic Park. A finish of pure conviction, the kind that changes the temperature in a stadium.
The pressure didn’t ease. Just before half-time, summer signing Camilo Duran produced a moment that will live with the home support for a while yet – a magnificent volley, struck clean and true, that flew beyond the LASK goalkeeper and sent Celtic in with a commanding lead.
LASK tried to respond after the interval, but Celtic had their teeth in the tie now. The moves were sharper, the press more coordinated, the belief obvious.
The third goal killed the contest and underlined the gulf on the night. Nygren turned provider, squaring for Duran, and the Colombian forward thundered in his second of the evening. One ruthless swing, and the place erupted again.
Three stunning goals. One foot, very firmly, on the Champions League ladder.
A veteran who still shapes teams
O’Neill, as ever, refused to get carried away. He stressed the job is not done, that there is still a second leg and still work to do. But this was another striking chapter in a career that refuses to drift quietly into memory.
When Brendan Rodgers resigned last October, Celtic turned to O’Neill as a short-term solution. He came out of retirement, took charge across two interim spells, and somehow turned a fractured season into an improbable league and cup double.
That was supposed to be the epilogue. Instead, it became the prologue to something else. Earlier this summer, he agreed to stay on a permanent basis.
“Sometimes it’s hard to see what Martin does for the team, but he seems to be able to mould a side,” former Scotland winger Pat Nevin said on Match of the Day. “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.”
The legend status is already secure. The banners, the songs, the memories from his first spell guarantee that. What he is building now, at 74, goes beyond nostalgia.
If Celtic finish the job against LASK, O’Neill will walk back into the Champions League after more than two decades away – not as a guest of honour, not as a relic of a different era, but as a manager who still shapes games, moulds teams and bends seasons to his will.
