Martin O’Neill's Remarkable Return to Champions League at 74

Martin O’Neill has been away from the Champions League for 22 years. By this time next week, he could be walking back into it.

The last time he stood on that stage, Celtic were trading blows with AC Milan in a goalless group match at Celtic Park in 2004. Some of the players who drove his team to an emphatic play-off win over LASK on Tuesday night weren’t even born then. They are living the history he created, and now, at 74, he is trying to write another chapter.

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

This has not been a gentle glide into a late-career epilogue. Earlier this month, O’Neill spent time in hospital after what the club described as a “small procedure”, missing a dominant Scottish Premiership victory at Kilmarnock while he recovered.

He has come back looking anything but diminished.

O’Neill is still the focal point at Celtic. The authority in the room. The man whose word shapes everything from selection to strategy. Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham run the day-to-day sessions, but the big calls? They are O’Neill’s.

“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.”

You see it in the dugout. You hear it in the way his players talk. And on Tuesday, you saw it in the way Celtic tore into the Austrian champions.

LASK arrive in form – and are blown away

LASK did not turn up in Glasgow to make up the numbers. Champions of Austria, in rhythm, and dangerous on the break, they had openings in the east end of the city. For spells, they asked questions.

Then Celtic answered them with three ruthless, spectacular replies.

Benjamin Nygren lit the night up first, arrowing a fierce strike into the top corner to jolt the tie in Celtic’s favour. It was the kind of finish that changes a stadium’s temperature in an instant.

The pressure built. The noise rose. And just before half-time, summer signing Camilo Duran delivered something even more eye-catching – a magnificent volley that flew past the goalkeeper and sent Celtic Park surging.

LASK were still alive, still probing. But the third goal felt like a statement. Nygren turned provider this time, and Duran, full of confidence, smashed in his second of the evening. Clinical. Brutal. The sort of combination play that suggests a team quickly learning each other’s rhythms.

O’Neill, true to type, refused to get carried away. The tie is not over, he insisted. The job is not done. Yet nobody watching could miss the significance of what this meant for a manager who was supposed to be retired.

From reluctant return to revival

When Brendan Rodgers resigned last October, Celtic did not turn to a rising young coach or a left-field appointment. They went back to a legend who had already given them some of their modern glory days.

O’Neill came out of retirement for what was meant to be a short-term fix – two interim spells, steady the ship, hand it over. Instead, he delivered something far more dramatic: an unlikely league and cup double that reignited the club and reminded everyone what he can still do.

That success persuaded both sides to commit. Earlier this summer, O’Neill agreed to stay on a permanent basis. It felt romantic. It is quickly becoming ruthless.

“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 moulded side is exactly what Celtic look like now: Nygren and Duran striking up an instant connection, the structure holding firm against a strong LASK outfit, the belief flowing from the touchline to the pitch.

O’Neill knows Europe is unforgiving. He knows one bad night can wreck the best of intentions. But here he is again, a 74-year-old manager, fresh from a hospital bed, standing on the brink of a return to the Champions League.

If this is the final act of his career, he seems determined to make it one that Europe remembers.