Time for a trophy /Three more years for Celtic’s rising star Christie
● Midfielder signs new deal at club where his dad failed to flourish
Ryan Christie wants to rectify his status as an oddity at Celtic Park by winning a major honour with the club.
The 23-year-old’s good form since breaking back into the Celtic first-team last month saw him rewarded with a new three-year contract yesterday.
Now he is desperate to amend a curious quirk. Despite being a Celtic player for nearly four years, his only major honour to date was won while at first club Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Christie lifted the Scottish Cup with his hometown side in 2015 after a victory over Falkirk and signed for Celtic shortly afterwards, returning to Inverness on loan.
Celtic have swept all before them in the last two years while winning a double treble under Brendan Rodgers but Christie has spent most of this spell on loan with Aberdeen. The teams met in the Scottish Cup final in 2017 but Christie was forced to sit it out and fled to Florida on holiday to escape the mixed emotions.
“I had no clue about where I
Dad Charlie will forever be Ryan Christie’s biggest hero. But the Celtic player was desperate to avoid following in his father’s footsteps in one crucial respect.
The news that emerged yesterday confirming he has signed a new three-year contract at Celtic Park reduces the fear he will. He’s already made more of a mark at Celtic than Charlie managed in the late 1980s when, faced with the challenge of displacing the likes of Frank Mcavennie, the striker returned to Inverness having not made a single first-team appearance.
Ryan has exceeded this in his first chapter at the club but recent loan spells at Aberdeen, where he spent a season and a half in total, suggested his long-term future might lie away from Celtic, as his father’s did. That isn’t what either wanted.
As recently as August, when he was left out of the matchday squad completely for a match against Hearts at Tynecastle, Christie thought his dream of winning something with Celtic was over. His father did not look back after being released and he became a club legend at Inverness Caledonian Thistle, where he made over 300 appearances.
But Christie Jnr was desperate not to leave Celtic Park with regrets. He has taken his chance in a way few could have predicted after replacing Olivier Ntcham at half-time in the Scottish Cup semi-final win over Hearts at BT Murrayfield at the end of last month. Christie scored his side’s last goal in the 3-0 victory and had a part to play in the first two.
He has since struck twice more to firmly re-establish himself in manager Brendan Rodgers’ plans. A new three-year contract, with his current deal set to expire at the end of this season, has been the icing on the cake after being called up to the Scotland squad last week for the forthcoming games against Albania and Israel. No wonder his father, now 52 and still involved at Inverness as the club’s head of youth, was ecstatic after hearing the latest burst of good news involving his son.
“My dad was freaking out,” said Ryan yesterday. “He’s only just stopped doing laps of the living room. He was very happy. He is a proud dad and he is a big Celtic fan too.
“I probably don’t know enough about my dad’s Celtic career. It’s quite strange the way our careers have followed the same path. I think he was a bit homesick and it was a very good Celtic squad and he couldn’t work his way into the team and got a bit frustrated with it all. But he went back up north and had a great career.
“It makes him proud to see me doing well at Celtic,” he added. “I’m so fortunate to have someone in my close family who knows the game and its pitfalls. I’m incredibly fortunate to have my dad by my side. He even helped me with this contract.
“He’s the first one I call after every game, good bad or indifferent. He will always tell it to me straight – which sometimes can be bad. There have been difficult times. At the start of the season when I wasn’t playing and couldn’t find my way into the team he still thought my chance would come. He kept telling me to make sure I was ready when that chance came.”
Christie is so focused on making the most of this run of games in the Celtic first-team he barely flinched when Dolly Menga rammed his head into his face during Sunday’s 0-0drawwithlivingston.theceltic player received praise for his nondramatic response to an aggressive act that could still see Menga land in trouble with the SFA. One Twitter meme described it as a “proper Scottish reaction”.
Christie was still sounding slightly bewildered by the episode yesterday. He ended up being spoken to by referee Kevin Clancy along with Menga, who escaped without even a booking. “There was no build up to it or anything like that and it just came out of nowhere,” said Christie.
“It took me by surprise and it took me a few seconds to realise that he has just put the head on me.
“The referee called us both over which made me think that he had seen it as there was nothing else to be seen other than that. He gave us both a talking to.”
Asked if he hoped Menga would receive some retrospective punishment, Christie added: “That is up to them not me. It is completely gone now for me. If it affected the game then that is another matter. But it will be interesting to see what happens now and if they do anything.”
“I’m incredibly fortunate to have my dad by my side, someone who knows the game and its pitfalls. He even helped me with this contract. He’s the first one I call after every game, good bad or indifferent”
RYAN CHRISTIE