Gary Keown How the modern world WILL change this old-school hero
IT is hard not to love Kieran Tierney. His story almost seems to belong to a different age. Indeed, he seems to belong to a different age. No peroxide Mohawk, no diamond earrings, no inflated opinion of himself. He’s the ball boy who made the first team, kept Shunsuke Nakamura’s boots in a glass case in his bedroom, bought his parents a new house with his first big contract and broke his jaw in the Scottish Cup final, went to hospital and was back at Hampden in time for the cup being presented.
If football comics were still a thing, you could run a strip on the Celtic full-back every single week of the year. ‘Teak-tough Tierney,’ you might call it. ‘The Prince of Paradise’.
In it, he would head off for a fish supper with his boots in a poly bag after scoring the winning goal and take two buses back to Motherwell, sharing his man-of-the-match champagne with his fellow passengers and helping any elderly travellers get home safely.
Maybe that’s what happens with him in real life already. You wouldn’t be surprised.
In the past few months alone, he’s been Celtic captain, earned a new six-year contract, played all over the pitch for Scotland, held his own against Arjen Robben and carved a very special slice of history by helping the Parkhead side break their long-standing British record of 62 domestic games unbeaten.
All whilst living in his mum and dad’s back room, getting into bother for leaving his washing and his dirty dishes lying around. And not eating his greens, probably.
The natural arc for this Boy’s Own story to follow would be for Tierney to stay a one-club man like that ultimate Celtic icon, Billy McNeill. To do what McNeill did. Lift a European trophy. Wear the armband around the world. Maybe become manager some day. Remain an indelible part of the fabric of the club he has always supported.
Tierney’s admission that he could happily stay a Celtic player for life should not be written off automatically, as such statements often are in football, as a sign of a lack of ambition.
The grass is not always greener. Happiness and fulfilment are much more elusive than money and infinitely harder to replace when lost.
Yet, in this enchanting tale of old-school values and the love of the game, there is one unavoidable problem. It is taking place against the backdrop of the modern world. And there are few more ruthless, cold-hearted examples of that than the horror story that is the top end of modern football.
Tierney is prime horseflesh, a multi-million pound commodity. What happens with Kieran Tierney is unlikely to be decided, in the end, by Kieran Tierney.
For starters, still just 20 years old, the landscape looks likely to change dramatically during his time as a professional. Celtic have access to the Champions League for now but who knows what will happen when the cycle agreed for the period covering 2018 to 2021 ends?
There is one thing you can be sure of. The big teams from the big nations will have another go at squeezing the life out of it, turning it into more of a closed shop. A breakaway league seems almost inevitable in time.
Celtic will still hope to prove they can be a big enough brand to be part of that. That spectacle against Bayern Munich in midweek was a sales pitch of sorts.
They are up against it, though. Like all clubs in backwaters such as Scotland, they are likely to be left with their noses pressed up against the glass.
Would staying here be such an attractive prospect for a talented player without Bayern or Barcelona to measure yourself against?
Of course, Tierney might still be long gone by 2021. Selling him to the highest bidder is, after all, part of the established business model at Celtic Park.
And Celtic a business with shareholders to satisfy.
If someone offered £15million or more, could the board really be expected to turn it down?
In assessing Tierney’s situation, it is difficult not to reflect on an interview given at Aston Villa recently by Alan Hutton. Stuck in the middle of a Q&A full of the usual club website fluff, he was asked to revisit January 2008 and his protracted transfer from Rangers to Spurs.
The Ibrox club had agreed a £9m fee early in the window, but Hutton twice refused to move before finally succumbing at the end of the month. Rangers were well on the way to financial meltdown at the time.
You need not be Hercule Poirot to read between the lines.
‘To be honest, I just wasn’t ready to leave,’ he recalled. ‘I was still young, I was happy where I was, playing well and enjoying every minute of it.
‘It was my boyhood club, so I found it really difficult to leave. I wasn’t really finishing everything I wanted to do there. It didn’t quite feel right, but, eventually, it did happen.’
Hutton was 23. He’d played a minor part in one league-winning campaign, but hadn’t been on the pitch the day the title was secured. He’d never lifted a cup. When Rangers reached a European final months later, he could only look on as a fan, his own script hijacked by others and following a very different plot line to the one he had envisaged.
It goes without saying that Celtic supporters ought to enjoy Tierney while he is around. Tierney, though, should relish these golden times, too.
Reality will intervene at some point. Money will make the decisions.
That is just the world we live in. Football tolerates fairytales for only so long. For now, though, Tierney really is living the life of the comic-book hero. And he wears it so well.