Celtic match historic feats of nine in a row
LONDON: Celtic were crowned champions for a ninth consecutive season on Monday as the Scottish top-flight was called to a premature end due to the coronavirus crisis.
The run matches the all-time record in Scottish football with both sides of the Glasgow divide having previously won nine in a row.
AFP Sport looks at how the current Celtic side match up to the club’s European Cupwinning vintage of the sixties and seventies and Rangers’ allconquering side of the nineties.
Celtic (1965-1974) Celtic had gone 12 years without winning a league title prior to the arrival of legendary manager Jock Stein in 1965.
Stein’s time in charge is best remembered for leading the Hoops to becoming the first British side to win the European Cup in 1967, but the foundations for the ‘Lisbon Lions’ were built on getting back on top in Scotland.
“The manager’s arrival was a big thing. He turned us into a good team and it just went from there,” Bobby Lennox, one of just three players to win all nine championships between 1965 and 1974, told Celtic’s website.
Stein’s Celtic dominated domestically with an entirely homegrown team at time when a host of Scottish sides were challenging for European honours.
The 1966/67 season was the standout, as on top of the European Cup, Celtic completed a clean sweep of the league, Scottish Cup, League Cup and Glasgow Cup on home soil.
Rangers (1988-1997) Rangers’ nine in a row was also preceded by a long spell of limited success with just one league title in 10 years before 1988.
That came in Graeme Souness’s first season as playercoach in 1986/87 and soon the money spent during his reign on a number of England internationals began bearing fruit.
Souness won two more titles before leaving to take charge of Liverpool in 1991.