On the anniversary of Celtic’s appearance in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final, former Celtic boss, Martin O’Neill halk-jokingly says in an interview that there was one tie that had he lost, would have cost him his job at the club.
It sounds incredible to say it, but that just shows you that even the legend that is O’Neill knew that if you didn’t get results at Parkhead, your job was on the line.
And what was the tie that O’Neill picked as the one that would have seen him ‘marched out of Celtic’? The fourth round tie against the German side, Stuttgart.
Speaking on The Record Celtic podcast, O’Neill said, “I can say this now but perhaps maybe didn’t really think about it then. But you know when the fans talk about the run, I think that they talk about the trips they’ve had to make, the games that they’ve had to play and the matches in which they’ve had to sometimes endure as much as anything else.
“But the one against the Germans [Stuttgart] when we had done terrifically well at home. And then we’d scored a couple of [away] goals early on and we were coasting. And eventually, we were hanging on in the game.
“I think that if we had lost that tie, honestly, you wouldn’t have seen me for dust. I would have been marched out of Parkhead with no fanfare at all.”
Celtic picked up an impressive first-leg 3-1 win against Stuttgart at Paradise before making the trip over to the Mercedes Benz Arena for the second leg.
Goals from Alan Thompson and Chris Sutton gave us a 2-0 lead in eleven first-half minutes. But Stuttgart rallied with a goal just before half-time. And in the 76th minute they equalised to pull the leg level and on the 88th minute took a 3-2 lead to force Celtic to hang onto a 5-4 aggregate win.
Of course, we all know what happened in the subsequent games after but that particular tie will long live in the memory of the Celtic fans as probably one of the most exciting and nervous of that famous cup run.
Hopefully, we will see those kinds of European nights under Ange Postecoglou next season. But for Martin O’Neill and his Celtic team, we will always be thankful for that 2003 European run. Even though there was heartache at the end of it.
In other news, Chris Sutton shares ‘unbelievable’ career first experienced at Celtic during 2003 UEFA Cup run
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