Martin O’Neill’s Return to Champions League Glory with Celtic

Martin O’Neill has waited 22 years for another crack at the Champions League. By this time next week, the 74-year-old could be back where his legend was forged, walking out under that anthem with Celtic once more.

The timescale is almost absurd. Some of the players who helped him dismantle Austrian champions LASK in Tuesday’s play-off first leg were not even born when his Celtic side last lined up in the competition proper – a tight, tense 0-0 draw with AC Milan at Celtic Park in 2004. They grew up hearing stories about those nights. Now they’re helping him write new ones.

O’Neill spent part of this month in hospital after what the club described as a “small procedure”, missing a convincing Scottish Premiership win at Kilmarnock while he recovered. The image of him, back in the dugout so soon after that, orchestrating a 3-0 demolition of an in-form LASK, says plenty about why he still matters here.

He is, as ever, the centre of gravity at Celtic. The figurehead. The voice that still carries in the dressing room and across the stands. Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham run the training ground rhythm, but the big calls still belong to O’Neill. Shape, selection, game-plan – they all run through him.

“Martin is a manager,” former Celtic midfielder Scott Brown said on Sportsound, the emphasis loaded 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 composure seeped into his team on a night that could easily have been awkward. LASK arrived in Glasgow’s east end as champions of Austria and in strong form. They had their moments, carved out openings, asked questions of Celtic’s back line.

Then the roof came off.

Benjamin Nygren lit the place up first, thundering a finish into the top corner to tilt the tie. One clean strike, one eruption of noise, and Celtic suddenly looked like a side that believed it belonged back on this stage.

The second goal was even more emphatic. Camilo Duran, a summer signing still feeling his way into life at the club, met a dropping ball with a volley of real conviction, sending it screaming past the goalkeeper before half-time. A magnificent hit, the kind that makes a crowd gasp before it roars.

LASK wobbled. Celtic smelled blood.

After the break, the pressure finally told again. Nygren turned provider, slipping the ball into Duran’s path, and the Colombian forward hammered home his second of the night. Three goals, each one a statement, and a tie that suddenly looks far more comfortable than many expected.

O’Neill, typically, refused to get swept away by the scoreline. He knows European football well enough to understand that 3-0 leads can be fragile if complacency creeps in. The job, as he made clear, is not finished.

But this is another vivid chapter in a career that was supposed to be over.

When Brendan Rodgers resigned last October, Celtic reached back into their history. O’Neill came out of retirement to steady the club on an interim basis – twice – and ended up delivering a league and cup double that few saw coming. It was not nostalgia; it was hard, sharp management, the kind that drags standards up and refuses to let them slip.

The board asked him to stay. He said yes. And now here he is, on the brink of leading Celtic back into the Champions League more than two decades after he last did it.

“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.”

Legend status is already secure. That much is not up for debate. What comes next, though, is the tantalising part.

One more strong performance in this tie, one more disciplined away display, and the old maestro will be back in the competition that once defined him. At 74, after surgery, after retirement, after all those years away, O’Neill stands on the verge of another Champions League campaign.

How many managers get to write a second European act like that?