Back around Christmas time in 2011, Jim McGuinness was the better part of a year away from the title that would cement him in Gaelic football history. Football of the association variety, he recalls, wasn’t much more than a blip on his radar save a lifelong affinity for Celtic.
IN May 2018, Neill Collins was preparing for a low-key cup tie amid the tranquil calm of Florida, the club captain of a once headline name in American soccer getting ready for the old banana skin of lower-league opposition. By the next day, the Tampa Bay Rowdies had been humbled by their hosts, their boss had lost his job, and Collins’ boots were up on the dressing room peg to stay, his backside now parked in the manager’s office.
A DERBY match taking place in North Carolina tonight looks set to feature a direct battle between two of Celtic’s young American full-backs who have been farmed out to lower league clubs back in their homeland.
HUGH O’NEILL never did get the chance to line up against Celtic – not at first-team level, not in the reserves, not even back home against the tribute act side of his home town.
BRIAN Welsh was more or less finished with Scottish football when he departed for a new life in the United States seven years ago. One too many political battles and frustration with the direction of the game at home coincided with an opportunity to set up his family on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Like many Dundonians of his era, James Harkes came from one of those families in the city where footballing loyalties could be split right down the middle. Some family members might watch Dundee one week, then Dundee United the next. But while his two brothers were Dark Blues and he’d often join them at Dens Park, Harkes was a United man.
In a vestibule area at a Scots American social club a short drive from the centre of New York City, there is an anonymous black-and- white picture of two neatly attired young men in rival strips smiling for the camera. The caption below indicates the scene: Rosario, Argentina. The year: 1964.
No one gave Costa Rica much of a chance at the World Cup in 1990. Not Scotland. Not the Costa Rican people. At one point, not even the Costa Rican players themselves. Their head coach in Italy, the Yugoslav Bora Milutinovic, had been playing mind games with his players.
