Martin O’Neill has revealed the only Celtic signing he ever regretted – and the player never cost him a penny.
O’Neill revolutionised the Hoops when he arrived in 2000, leading the club back to the top of Scottish football after almost a decade of turmoil on and off the park. Inheriting the mess left behind by John Barnes, the Northern Irishman transformed the Parkhead giants with the signings of Chris Sutton, Alan Thompson, Didier Agathe, Neil Lennon and more – dethroning a star-studded Rangers side to lift a famous Treble in his debut season.
O’Neill went on to win seven trophies in Glasgow, and oversaw the memorable run to Seville where Celts suffered a heartbreaking UEFA Cup Final defeat to Jose Mourinho’s Porto in 2003. Regarded as one of the club’s greatest-ever managers, the ex-Leicester City boss got more signings right than wrong during his five iconic years in charge. But looking back, the 72-year-old admits there’s one capture in particular that simply didn’t work out.
As Celtic searched for a successor to Henrik Larsson’s iconic number seven jersey, O’Neill plumped for a marquee replacement for Brazil World Cup winner Juninho. The little genius was a superstar at Middlesbrough and Atletico Madrid and joined the Hoops on a free transfer in 2004. But after just a handful of starts, the classy playmaker decided to cut ties with the club after just six months, moving back to his homeland with Palmeiras. Despite a promising debut against Rangers, it became clear that Juninho’s best days were behind him and the midfielder struggled to get to grips with Scottish football.
O’Neill takes his share of the blame for that and admits the pair didn’t quite see eye-to-eye. In an interview with Graham Spiers on the Press Box podcast, O’Neill delivered an honest answer when asked which one of his 23 signings he regretted most at Parkhead.
He said: “There weren’t too many, I have to say. 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.
“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.
“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.”
He added: “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.”