Martin O’Neill's Remarkable Return to Champions League
Martin O’Neill stood on the touchline at Celtic Park on Tuesday night, 22 years on from his last taste of the Champions League. By next week, he could be right back in it.
The last time he was involved in the competition, Celtic were grinding out a goalless draw with AC Milan in the group stage in 2004. Some of the players who helped him dismantle LASK in this play-off first leg were not even born then. That gap in time felt surreal. The football did not.
O’Neill is 74 now. Earlier this month he was in hospital for what the club described as a “small procedure”, missing a comfortable Scottish Premiership win at Kilmarnock while he recovered. Any doubts about whether he still had the energy for this level were answered under the lights in Glasgow’s east end.
He remains the axis around which this Celtic side turns. The presence. The authority. The manager who makes the big calls, sets the tone and lets his lieutenants, Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham, drill the detail on the training pitch.
“Martin is a manager,” Scott Brown said on Sportsound, stressing the word as if it still meant something old‑school and weighty. “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 arrived as Austrian champions, in form and unafraid. They carved out chances, asked questions, pushed Celtic back at times. Then the game snapped away from them in three savage moments.
Benjamin Nygren lit the fuse, arrowing a superb strike into the top corner to rip the contest open. Celtic Park roared and never really quietened.
The pressure told again before the break. Summer signing Camilo Duran watched a dropping ball and met it with a volley that screamed past the goalkeeper, a magnificent second that felt like a statement as much as a goal.
LASK tried to regroup after half-time, but Celtic sensed vulnerability. Nygren turned provider, slipping Duran in, and the Colombian forward thrashed in his second of the night. Three goals, all emphatic. A tie that had looked awkward suddenly looked like an opportunity.
O’Neill did not indulge in any wild celebrations. He rarely does. He talked about the job not being finished, about the dangers of assuming anything in Europe. Yet this felt like another remarkable chapter in a career that refuses to wind down.
When Brendan Rodgers resigned last October, O’Neill came out of retirement to steady the club in what was meant to be a short, caretaker stint. It turned into two interim spells and, improbably, a league and cup double that few saw coming.
That success persuaded both sides to make the relationship permanent in the summer. Celtic needed a figurehead. O’Neill, it turned out, still needed the fight.
“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.”
Now the prospect is real. One more composed performance away from home and O’Neill will walk back into the Champions League at 74, leading a new generation who only know his first era from grainy clips and family stories.
The stage he once owned is opening up again. What happens if Celtic step through it?
