Yesterday, Celtic announced the departure of John Park, who had started as a scout, became Chief Scout and then earned himself the fancy title Head of Football Development. To many he was a huge success. To others, he’s a guy who’s had way more influence and authority at Celtic Park than he ever ought to have been given.
One thing above all else is certain; he was a key part of The Strategy, the buy them young and sell them for big money one. The one Sevco has tried to copy, and failed to. The one that netted us millions from the sales of Wanyama and others, but ultimately the one that set back the development of our squad.
There was a point not that long ago when we had on the books the detritus of his failures too; guys like Pukki, Balde and others. It’s difficult to say whether the mistakes were more costly than our gains – in purely financial terms – but we definitely went backwards on the pitch. That’s why in spite of a few glowing tributes there aren’t a lot of tears being shed amongst the fans.
John Park belongs to a different era at Celtic Park; this is the Brendan Rodgers era and big changes have already come and bigger ones are on their way. The club has started to build a squad; last night Moussa Dembele committed himself to the club for the long term, one of the best pieces of news I’ve heard in a while. This is the start of something special.
John Park had good ideas at the start, but like a lot of other people at Celtic he saw his role expand far beyond that which he’d been hired for. There were rumours of interference in team issues, but it would have taken a very weak manager to tolerate that and I don’t believe either Neil Lennon nor Ronny Deila would have stood for it.
Brendan Rodgers certainly won’t.
Above everything else, this is a sure sign that his revolution inside the club is gathering pace. He has his own ideas about how things should work here, and if you’ve watched our youth games the last few months you’ll see that he attends almost all of them. He has his nose everywhere, in every part of the football operation, and that’s the clearest indication you’ll get that he’s not inclined to have someone else running “Football Development.”
Brendan is the Head of Football Development at Celtic now.
That’s as it should be.