Celtic's Title Triumph and O'Neill's Journey: A Season of Change

The phone says 4.47pm, May 16th. Celtic Park. The pitch almost empty now, the noise long since drained away. Eighty yards in the distance, Martin O’Neill is in goal.

The 74-year-old, supposedly just the interim manager, is in an old-school tracksuit, shuffling his feet, throwing himself about as best he can while his young grandchildren scuff shots at him. They giggle. He grins. It’s a warm, almost domestic scene in a stadium that, two hours earlier, had been shaking.

Scroll back on the camera roll. 2.30pm. Same goalmouth. Different world.

Callum Osmand has just buried Celtic’s third against Hearts, the goal that clinched the Scottish Premiership title. He’s nowhere to be seen in the photograph because he’s under a pile of bodies – players, staff, fans spilling from the stands, some stripped to the waist, all lost in the delirium of another championship.

Scattered in the foreground are Hearts players, some on their knees, some standing rigid, hands on heads, faces hollowed out. Sixty-six years they had waited for a league title. They were three minutes away from it. Three minutes from the sort of heartbreak that 2026 would christen a Mayo moment.

Then Daizen Maeda changed everything.

Celtic’s 14th title in 15 seasons sounds routine on paper. It was anything but. Hearts had ripped up the script with an improbable title charge. Rangers stumbled through another meandering campaign. Celtic themselves lurched through a Rodgers-O’Neill-Nancy-O’Neill managerial hopscotch that made the whole thing feel fragile, combustible, alive.

In the middle of it stood O’Neill, fielding questions about “fairytales” and the prospect of a double in the Scottish Cup final against Dunfermline and Neil Lennon a week later – widely assumed to be his Celtic farewell.

The chaos on the day did not help the defeated. No final whistle audible amid the pitch invasion, Hearts players confronted by chest-beating celebrations in their faces, then gone from the stadium without even changing out of their kits. Celtic apologised formally the next day, a detail largely lost to the title euphoria. O’Neill, though, was entitled to bask. The achievement, he said, had given him “a reason to live”. People even spoke of a statue.

Only the whistle had not blown on O’Neill’s Celtic story.

Twenty-six days later, he was confirmed as permanent manager on a one-year deal with an option for a second. The reaction was mixed: amazement, joy, and a sharp intake of breath at what looked like a lack of long-term planning. Celtic, as ever, was a club split down the middle. It was no coincidence O’Neill preached unity on that wild afternoon against Hearts.

Fast-forward 37 days. Same stadium, very different sound.

Celtic were back at Parkhead for the first time since the title win, a pre-season friendly against Middlesbrough. In his programme notes, O’Neill called that last occasion “dramatic and thrilling”. This one was neither. The sun still shone, O’Neill still wore the tracksuit, but only around 6,000 Celtic fans turned up.

There were explanations – holidays, opposition, timing – but the low turnout also spoke to a simmering discontent about the club’s direction. And yet, three weeks earlier, it had been reported that 99.5 per cent of season ticket holders had renewed. Disillusionment in the stands, loyalty at the turnstiles: the classic Celtic contradiction.

Notably absent were Kelechi Iheanacho and Maeda. Iheanacho, scorer of that season-shaping, contentious 90+9th-minute penalty at Motherwell three days before the Hearts decider, had gone to Bursaspor in Turkey’s second tier instead of signing on again. Maeda was on his way to Ipswich Town.

Brendan Rodgers, watching all this from a distance, would have recognised the pattern: Kyogo Furuhashi gone, Nicolas Kühn and Adam Idah too. Many supporters did as well. Plenty understood why Celtic refused to match Iheanacho’s wage demands, but in Glasgow, understanding rarely kills a rumour. Within days, stories were circulating that the club’s recruitment stance had even pushed O’Neill towards the exit.

He was still there last Saturday. So were more than 20,000 fans as Celtic hosted AC Milan in their final pre-season friendly. On the pitch was Camilo Duran, the new Colombian centre-forward signed from Qarabag, a player who scored against Benfica in last season’s Champions League and had already found the net against Middlesbrough. Three pre-season games, three goals. A small sample, but a useful comfort.

A few days later, another striker arrived: Kasper Høgh, for around €13million, roughly what Celtic banked for Maeda. Høgh’s calling card? Two goals in Bodo/Glimt’s 3-1 Champions League win over Manchester City last season. If he and Duran can finish at that level, they should be more than capable of punishing Dundee on Monday night, then Kilmarnock, Falkirk, Aberdeen and St Mirren in the weeks that follow.

Upcoming Fixtures

• Dundee
• Kilmarnock
• Falkirk
• Aberdeen
• St Mirren

Those are Celtic’s first five league opponents. None finished in Scotland’s top five last season. It is a gentle runway.

That early stretch should allow Celtic to keep one eye fixed on the home-and-away Champions League qualifier in the middle of next month, the stage where they have slipped before. Kairat Almaty last year still gnaws at Rodgers. Selling remains central to the club’s economic model. If more departures – such as the projected sale of Arne Engels – are matched by timely arrivals, O’Neill might yet build the kind of early momentum that calms a restless crowd.

It all feels a long way from last October, when Dermot Desmond spoke of a “toxic atmosphere” around the club. The scepticism has not vanished. It will not, until this squad shows it can do more than simply turn up in Europe. Competing is no longer enough. Prosperity is the demand.

And all of this is unfolding with a month still to run in the transfer window, which closes on August 31st. Across the city, Rangers have been busier, and there is a sense they dare not be as erratic as last season.

The symmetry is striking. Hearts’ manager at Parkhead in May was Derek McInnes. He is now at Ibrox. Hearts’ captain and goalscorer that day, Lawrence Shankland, has followed him. So has Cammy Devlin, the driving midfielder and Hearts’ player of the season. A maroon core imported to inject some much-needed steel into Rangers.

McInnes is the sixth permanent manager in five years, the third in 12 months. Russell Martin and Danny Röhl never quite convinced in their sharp suits. McInnes is different: a former Rangers player, a figure who looks and feels like he belongs in that dugout. Yet three of the last four seasons have ended without a trophy. Expectation is heavy. His first steps come at Tannadice on Friday night, and they will be judged from the moment he leaves the tunnel.

His departure from Hearts opened the door for Wouter Vrancken at Tynecastle. The Belgian has had a brutal start: two games, two defeats to Sturm Graz in a Champions League qualifier. Replacing not just a coach but the raw energy of last season’s Hearts side will be a hard task. That surge, that refusal to go away, drew eyes to Scottish football from well beyond its borders.

Hearts pushed until the final breath. They turned May 16th into a day that will not be forgotten in Gorgie or in the East End of Glasgow.

The 2026-27 season is scheduled to end on May 16th, 2027. The date is already circled in fixture lists and on whiteboards.

O’Neill’s grandchildren should probably circle it too.