{"id":196085,"date":"2025-06-19T03:24:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T03:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196085\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T03:24:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T03:24:10","slug":"martin-oneill-says-he-was-really-interested-in-signing-celtic-icon-before-he-joined-gordon-strachan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196085\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin O’Neill says he was ‘really interested’ in signing Celtic icon before he joined Gordon Strachan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Martin O\u2019Neill\u2019s period at Celtic is legendary of the highest order. <\/strong><\/p>\n

When O\u2019Neill<\/a> first walked into Glasgow in 2000, it was Rangers who were the dominant force, and the ten had just been stopped years earlier. <\/p>\n

But what O\u2019Neill achieved, including Celtic winning the Treble<\/a>, has helped pave the way for the dominance of the current times because he started it all. <\/p>\n

The 73-year-old managed some great players during his days in the Celtic Park<\/a> dugout, from the King of Kings, Henrik Larsson, to the no-nonsense Neil Lennon, as well as the underrated Stiliyan Petrov. <\/p>\n

When O\u2019Neill left Celtic<\/a> in 2005, two years later, a player who is now as highly regarded as the above trio put on the green and white colours for the first time.<\/p>\n

But it could have happened a lot earlier, as O\u2019Neill explains. <\/p>\n

\"ScottPhoto by Mark Runnacles\/Getty ImagesMartin O\u2019Neill says he was \u2018really interested\u2019 in signing Scott Brown as the Celtic manager<\/p>\n

Scott Brown is a cult hero<\/a> at Celtic, one of the club\u2019s best ever players, as well as captains after his trophy-laden 14-year stint in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

The hard-hitting midfielder joined Celtic in 2007, when Gordon Strachan<\/a> was in charge, but he could have arrived earlier if O\u2019Neill had pushed forward with his initial thoughts. <\/p>\n

Brown<\/a> was at Hibernian, and O\u2019Neill told talkSPORT that when he was still at Celtic, he was \u2018really interested\u2019 in bringing him in. <\/p>\n

But there were two reasons why it didn\u2019t happen. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a manager at Celtic, he was a young kid coming through at Hibs,\u201d said O\u2019Neill. \u201cI was really interested in taking him, but it was going to be very hard for me. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very young, and breaking through into that midfield that we had at the time was going to be difficult. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnyway, he ended up having a fantastic career after there at Celtic \u2013 on the field he was (fiery).\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s Celtic career in numbers<\/p>\n

Whether Brown had come in under O\u2019Neill, or when he did under Strachan, he still would have written his name into the legendary books like he did. <\/p>\n

From his no-nonsense style on the pitch to the countless numbers of trophies he picked up.<\/p>\nClubGamesGoalsAssistsScotland capsDomestic trophies<\/tr>\n\nCeltic<\/td>\n618<\/td>\n46<\/td>\n63<\/td>\n55<\/td>\n22<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Celtic captain Callum McGregor<\/a> is doing an outstanding job right now, but you could argue that he needs that Brown-type or Victor Wanyama-esque player next to him, or to challenge him, especially in Europe. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin O\u2019Neill\u2019s period at Celtic is legendary of the highest order. When O\u2019Neill first walked into Glasgow in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4100],"tags":[94,79673,42425,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-196085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-martin-oneill","10":"tag-scott-brown","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114707894755523712","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}