Formed: 1888
Nicknames: The Hoops, The Bhoys
UEFA club competition honours (runners-up in brackets)
• European Champion Clubs’ Cup: 1967, (1970)
• UEFA Cup: (2003)
Domestic honours (most recent triumph in brackets)
• League title: 44 (2013)
• Scottish Cup: 36 (2013)
History
• Celtic Football Club were formed at a meeting in St Mary’s church hall in Calton, Glasgow by Irish Marist Brother Walfrid on 6 November 1887. The club were set up with the purpose of alleviating poverty in Glasgow’s East End by raising money for the charity Walfrid had founded, the Poor Children’s Dinner Table. Manager Willie Maley guided Celtic to six straight titles between 1905 and 1910, and they became the first Scottish team to win a domestic double in 1907.
• 1967 was Celtic’s annus mirabilis. They won every competition they entered including, most famously, the European Champion Clubs’ Cup when they beat FC Internazionale Milano 2-1 in Lisbon on 25 May. In so doing, Jock Stein’s ‘Lisbon Lions’ were the first British side to lift club football’s premier prize – and they achieved it with a group of players hailing from within a 48km radius of Glasgow.
• Stein’s charges reached the final again in 1970, only to lose 2-1 to Feyenoord at San Siro, though on the way they registered the highest attendance ever for a European club match when 133,961 squeezed into Hampden Park to watch the semi-final against Leeds United AFC.
• Under Stein, Celtic landed nine consecutive championships between 1966 and 1974, a world record which wasn’t equalled until 1997 by city rivals Rangers FC. Stein’s captain Billy McNeill later had two spells as manager, notably when he returned in 1987 to inspire Celtic to a league and cup double in their centenary season. In 1994, businessman and Celtic fan Fergus McCann took over the club. A share issue raised almost €18m and facilitated the redevelopment of Celtic Park into a 60,832 all-seater stadium.
• The 2000/01 campaign saw the arrival of Martin O’Neill and the Northern Irishman steered Celtic to a domestic treble in his first term, becoming just the second manager to do so since Stein. O’Neill also led Celtic to the UEFA Cup final in 2003, going down 3-2 after extra time to José Mourinho’s FC Porto in Seville.
• Gordon Strachan carved his name into Celtic history as the first manager since Stein to claim three successive championships, between 2006 and 2008. Under Strachan, Celtic also qualified for the last 16 of the UEFA Champions League in two consecutive seasons for the first time, eventually falling to would-be winners AC Milan at San Siro in 2007.
• Neil Lennon was made caretaker manager towards the end of the 2009/10 campaign before being appointed permanently on 9 June 2010. Lennon, who experienced glory days under O’Neill and Strachan as a player, collected the Scottish Cup in his first full term before ending a four-year wait for the league crown in 2012, followed immediately by a second success in 2013.
—reproduced from UEFA site
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CELTIC PARK ROCKING !