Like the ball itself, things go round and round in football. But, in terms of coincidence, it has been almost karmic to be in Scotland this week. The country is preparing for its cup final between Celtic and Hibernian, and for the possibility that Celtic will complete a first domestic Treble for 32 seasons. Hibernian, incredibly, have not won the cup for 99 years. These are big issues.
Yet a man who plays for neither Hibs nor Celtic, a man, in fact, with no official connection to either club, Alex Ferguson, has been central to a large circle of the talk surrounding today's game at Hampden Park. If at first this seems inappropriate, think again. Two of this afternoon's pivotal figures, Alex McLeish, the Hibernian manager, and Martin O'Neill, the Celtic manager, are linked closely to their Manchester United counterpart. McLeish was one of Ferguson's most influential players at Aberdeen when they set about altering the power in the land in the 1980s. Nowadays Ferguson acts as mentor-cum-friend-cum-adviser to McLeish. The pair speak two or three times a week. On Wednesday, although he had just put down the phone to Ferguson, then in Milan, McLeish said he intended to ring Ferguson before kick-off today. McLeish would not specify details of these telephone transactions, although he got some defence in early. "I have to emphasise that I don't ask Alex on these occasions what I've to do or what team I've to pick. I already know that for myself. But we blether about one or two wee things. I'll have another word with him, maybe Friday night or Saturday morning. He's my secret scout."
O'Neill's relationship with Ferguson is less familial, but O'Neill is said to be Ferguson's successor in the manager's chair at Old Trafford. Certainly O'Neill's name has usually just succeeded Ferguson's in any football conversation these past 10 days. This week started with Ferguson describing O'Neill as: "A man you don't mess around. Just what you need at a big club." Each and every word has been used in evidence.
But there is another reason why Ferguson's name has had an outing this week. Gratifyingly, it has nothing to do with managerial tittle-tattle. It has to do with Celtic, however, and with Celtic's last Treble, in 1969. Ferguson was there that April 26th at Hampden Park when it was completed - as a Rangers player. Memorably so.
Saying he was there, though, would be considered an exaggeration by some of those at Rangers at the time. Despite being a far from towering striker, Ferguson was deputised to mark Billy McNeill at corners. McNeill was, according to Ferguson, "the best header of a ball I ever played against".
In just the second minute of that 1969 cup final, McNeill reminded people of this when he lost Ferguson at a corner and headed Celtic on their way to a 4-0 victory and the final leg of another domestic Treble. It was to be Ferguson's last first-team match for Rangers. In Ferguson's autobiography, the subtext he refers to is that an element at Rangers wanted him out anyway because he had married a Catholic. They used McNeill's header as an excuse.
"I never realised that until I read it," McNeill said on Thursday night. Now a publican in Glasgow, McNeill was a legendary Celtic captain and went on to manage the club. "I never realised it was Alec's last game. We got the early goal and, before we knew where we where, we were 3-0 up at half-time. We just made sure in the second half that there wasn't a comeback, and then Stevie Chalmers got the fourth." It was the first time Rangers had lost a cup final since 1929.
It was, more importantly, the second domestic Treble for Celtic in three seasons. The great team of Jock Stein was at its peak. That Celtic had been knocked out of the European Cup at the quarterfinal stage by AC Milan that March is another indicator of that side's greatness, and should act as another warning against those who seek to compare now with then. There is, currently, no valid comparison. Especially when it comes to silverware.
However, men like McNeill are magnanimous. "They've got a great appetite, a great spirit," he said of today's Celtic, "that's the big comparison. These things are very important. They all enjoy each other's company, they all enjoy playing for each other." Asked if that was O'Neill's biggest achievement - the restoration of a team ethos after the relative disintegration under John Barnes, culminating in the Mark Viduka dressing-room incident at half time in the fateful Inverness Caledonian Thistle cup tie - McNeill replied: "Martin's had many achievements. How quickly he recognised what he needed was the first. How quickly he then got what he needed was next. But one great quality this team has is someone up front who can score. They have an astonishing scorer in Henrik Larsson. Every great team has to have that."
That Larsson factor is fundamental to another O'Neill achievement: the installation of a winning mentality. It, again, is incomparable with the nine-season victory trail of the Stein era, but it is worth remembering that when Stein arrived as manager in 1965, 10 of the players who would win the European Cup two years later were already at Celtic. Only Willie Wallace was brought in by Stein. O'Neill, by contrast, has had to construct his side from the off.
Each of his seven signings is a firstteam regular and, although Larsson's goals have constituted much of the difference between this season and last, McNeill is correct to focus on O'Neill's immediate identification of Celtic's ills and his swift search for a remedy.
O'Neill is far too self-effacing to discuss his talents in public, but two of his signings, Neil Lennon from Leicester City and Alan Thompson from Aston Villa, both mentioned the recuperative work O'Neill has undertaken on the players he inherited from the previous regime. "Look at the likes of Bobby Petta and Stilian Petrov, who didn't have great times last season," said Lennon. "The turnaround in their performances has been phenomenal. That's down to the gaffer. He has just boosted their shattered confidence. He has that effect on people, they just want to go out and play for him. The players who are here from last season have found something. They've made a massive contribution."
Thompson also highlighted that underacknowledged facet of O'Neill - his ability to rebuild a player's self-belief. Thompson himself is resurgent. This time last year he did not even make the bench for Villa against Chelsea at Wembley.
Thompson missed another cup final in March, when Celtic defeated Kilmarnock at Hampden, but he should be part of a full-strength Celtic today. By five o'clock, if the bookmakers are right, that team should have written a page of its own in Celtic's 114-year history.
That would act as a clear demarcation line between now and 1969. Not that O'Neill considers the Celtic past a burden. O'Neill thinks positively of those days and of that team as an inspiration.
"The Celtic side under Jock Stein, as I've said often, was the greatest in the club's history and we have enormous respect for them," O'Neill said at Parkhead on Thursday. "But what they achieved shouldn't be a spectre around here, it should be a driving force. We should always try to aspire to it.
"That team had a fantastic will to win, they felt they couldn't lose, but I don't think such belief comes overnight. That kind of conviction takes time to establish. Loads of trophies had been won, two European Cup finals had been reached, and I'm sure that afterwards those players looked back and remembered that when they were playing they felt nobody could beat them. I think this present group have made progress in that direction, but that doesn't mean anyone here will take anything for granted."
Not with O'Neill around.
Complacent is the last thing the Celtic of Stein were, and complacency is the last thing one associates with O'Neill. It would be wrong to say that today represents a footnote in his thoughts, but O'Neill already has his eyes on the future, particularly Europe.
Competition for the signatures of the Continent's finest is fierce and, hindered as they are by the economics of Scottish football, Celtic must rely on other things, such as the magnetism of the manager, to lure players capable of upping the standard. O'Neill mentioned a couple of other factors in that.
"I always think there is a chance here when players see the stadium," O'Neill said. "I always think the atmosphere should attract people. I'm not saying that every player we're trying to recruit should know the history of Celtic, but I think that most are genuinely interested when they get to know about it. Most players would know we won the European Cup. So we have some of the requirements needed to attract people."
O'Neill had addressed the past the present and the future. He was about to leave when one last question came in from the flank. It began: "Alex Ferguson said . . ."
