Martin O'Neill's Improbable Return to Celtic's Champions League Ambitions

Martin O'Neill stood on the touchline again, and Celtic Park felt the years fold in on themselves.

Twenty-two seasons have passed since he last prowled a Champions League technical area. By this time next week, he could be on the brink of doing it all over again.

Some of the players who tore into LASK in Tuesday’s play-off first leg were not even born when O’Neill’s Celtic held AC Milan to a goalless draw in the group stage back in 2004. That was his last act in the competition. It suddenly doesn’t feel so distant.

A 74-year-old at the heart of it all

O’Neill is 74 now. Earlier this month he was in hospital for what the club described as a “small procedure”, forced to sit out a comfortable Scottish Premiership win at Kilmarnock while he recovered.

He has come back looking anything but diminished.

He remains the central figure at Celtic, the man whose decisions still set the tone for everything else. Last season’s surge to the title and cup, this season’s sharp, confident start – all of it has his fingerprints on it.

The training ground graft falls to his lieutenants, Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham, who run the sessions and handle the daily detail. O’Neill hovers above it, choosing, shaping, judging.

“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.”

That calm authority has become part of the club’s weather system again. It was all over this performance.

LASK arrive in form – and get blown away

LASK did not turn up in Glasgow as tourists. Austrian champions, in strong form, they carried enough threat to worry any side. They carved out chances in the east end of the city, asked questions, forced Celtic to feel the jeopardy of a Champions League play-off.

Then the game snapped.

Benjamin Nygren, lively and fearless, took the ball and ripped it into the top corner for the opener. One touch, one swing, and the stadium detonated.

The pressure grew. The tempo rose. LASK wobbled.

Before half-time, Celtic struck again. Summer signing Camilo Duran watched the ball drop and met it with a volley of outrageous purity, a magnificent second that turned a tight contest into a statement.

LASK tried to regroup after the break, tried to slow the noise and the rhythm. Celtic refused to let them.

Nygren burst forward once more, picked his moment and teed up Duran. The Colombian did the rest, smashing in his second of the night and, with it, a scoreline that reflected Celtic’s ruthlessness as much as LASK’s collapse.

Three stunning goals. One foot, firmly, on the path back to the Champions League proper.

The architect who came back

O’Neill did not leap about on the touchline. He rarely does. He spoke afterwards of unfinished business in this tie, of work still to do, of dangers still lurking in the second leg.

But this was another chapter in a comeback story that already felt improbable.

When Brendan Rodgers resigned last October, O’Neill stepped out of retirement and into the chaos, agreeing to guide Celtic through what was supposed to be a short interim spell. Then another. The club steadied, then surged. By the end of the season, they were lifting both league and cup – a double that had looked wildly unlikely when he walked back through the door.

He agreed to stay on permanently in the summer. The gamble looks inspired.

“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.”

A legend already, then. Yet here he is, one commanding win away from dragging Celtic back into the Champions League at 74, shaping another team, another era, and daring Europe to take notice again.