“We never really got on so famously,” Martin O’Neill on Juninho

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The Celtic Star

·13 febbraio 2025

“We never really got on so famously,” Martin O’Neill on Juninho

When Martin O’Neill was manager of Celtic Football Club, he signed some wonderful players over the course of his tenure…

Martin O’Neill (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Although blessed with Larsson, Moravcik, Lambert, Petrov and Mjallby to start with, the team and squad required a significant revamp and a reinvigorated sense of purpose, as he aimed to break the stranglehold we had been under for he previous decade.

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Martin O’Neill definitely had an eye for a player

Chris Sutton was drafted in from Chelsea and Joos Valgaeren joined with Alan Thompson and Didier Agathe. Later that season the legendary figure of Neil Lennon would be added from Leicester City – a move which O’Neill has recently lauded as being his most important whilst manager of the football club. For sure, O’Neill definitely had an eye for a player and used it to great effect when in the dugout at Celtic Park.

UEFA Pokal 02/03, Glasgow; Celtic Glasgow – VfB Stuttgart 3:1; Joos VALGAEREN/Celtic (Photo by Martin Rose/Bongarts/Getty Images)

Graham Spiers was recently speaking to the Irishman on his Press Box podcast and asked the witty former Celts boss about who his worst signing was over that 5-year period from 2000-2005. Although admitting that there weren’t too many, he did acknowledge the one that was quite regrettable in the cold light of day all these years later.

‘There’s a gamble attached to every signing’

“There weren’t too many, I have to say,” he said. “There’s a gamble attached to every signing, whether it’s Chris Sutton coming from a poor time at Chelsea to becoming terrific with us, signing Neil Lennon, Alan Thompson, Joos Valgareen, or Didier Agathe for £50,000, which wasn’t really a gamble but turned out to be a terrific signing.

Celtic’s Juninho is congratulated by manager Martin O’Neill after being substituted. Photo IMAGO

Signing of Juninho was going to be risky

“So those were all really good signings to match up with some really good players I inherited. I suppose, deep down, if I was thinking about it, I felt that the signing of Juninho was going to be risky in the sense that he didn’t cost anything, he was out of contract, he’d just been freed by Middlesbrough, which seems really strange because considering some years earlier he had been a phenomenal player. On the strength of his great time at Middlesbrough, he ended up signing for Atletico Madrid.

“In 1997, Middlesbrough reached two cup finals, one against us at Leicester City in the League Cup and one against Chelsea, and lost both of them and got relegated. But he was a fantastic player, the best-attacking midfield player in the Premier League at the time, no question about it. Running at people, taking players on, skipping past players and making things happen.

“Obviously, the intervening years had taken its toll on him. I think your natural ability’s still there, but can you go past players as much? He went back to Middlesbrough and did not have the best of times there and I suppose I probably thought I could resurrect something in him at the time.”

IMAGO / Allstar. Juninho & John Hartson, Celtic v Hearts Celtic Park 16 October 2004 Photo Allstar/Richard Selle

‘I was hoping to get more out of him’

The 72-year-old added: “He was there for a little while. Some of the games he played, I felt he was never really up to speed. Again, signing someone who has maybe not had a proper pre-season. But we signed him for nothing, so he never actually cost the football club other than six or seven months’ wages or something like that.

“I was hoping to get more out of him, so I think I was probably a bit more disappointed with myself because we never really got on so famously. When he finished his career, he could easily say that he was actually a marvellous footballer. He just wasn’t for us. He didn’t play well enough.”

Paul Gillespie

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