Celtic have completed the league season unbeaten. Incredible. Invincible.
Next up is Hampden where a win will secure the treble and give us a place in history which no-one will ever come close to matching; an unbeaten domestic campaign and a grand slam. It will be only the fourth time we’ve won one of those, but there will never be another like this.
It’s amazing to think we’re watching an apex moment here, amazing and perhaps even a little bit sad.
I don’t remember how I felt at the end of Martin’s first campaign when we’d amassed over 100 points; there was a sense that things were just getting started. When we beat that record points total a couple of years later I saw that number and thought “We’ll never see a Celtic side that gets near that again.”
And I was wrong, because here we are.
But how do you top this? How do you beat an unbeaten league campaign?
Next week we will eclipse it when we close out a full domestic campaign without losing a match, but then what? When you’ve smashed aside everything in front of you, setting records as though it were routine, how do you top it? Will we ever see a season quite like this again?
Fortunately, there are grander things in front of us. An unbeaten league season sounds like the stuff of miracles, but in fact it’s been done several times. An unbeaten domestic campaign has only ever been accomplished once.
I doubt we’ll ever see either again; this generation has, in some ways, had its crowning glory, except in one crucial respect.
For us to have truly supped at the cup of glory we need to progress in Europe, and you wonder if that is as beyond us as many would have thought.
There are no negatives here.
We turn our attention now to the cup final, and beyond that to seven in a row and another Champions League campaign.
Brendan and this team will be hungry to hold onto everything we’ve done this season, and if a team wants to end this run they will need to get us on the off-day to end them all. Our ambitions are now greater than this moment, bigger than these achievements here at home. We want it all.
Celtic Park today looked as great as it ever has. The pitch will be relayed in time for the next campaign – Brendan will get his super-pitch, as discussed previously – and the stands will be filled with season ticket holders … but today was a special thing to see, as the team came out for the game to the greatest tifo the Green Brigade has ever done.
This was a miracle day for us.
Let’s not forget that this campaign started with a loss.
In Gibraltar.
In the Champions League.
Who thought, on that day, that we’d be celebrating this, a year and one day after the appointment of Brendan as boss?
We’ve played much of the season with last season’s team. Brendan signed a mere five players; Dembele, Sinclair, Gamboa, De Vries and Toure. The latter two barely featured in the second half of the campaign. Gamboa has gotten into the team now, whereas Dembele and Sinclair have been outstanding.
But the core of this team was already here, and Brown, Tierney, Armstrong, the back line and the keeper have all been superb. Forrest has improved out of sight. Guys like Callum McGregor have made places their own. It is remarkable.
Brendan, after the game, thanked the board for giving him the opportunity to come to our club. That speaks volumes about the man and the way he sees Celtic. He is a good man, a genuine leader, a man who knows his own value but is happy to share the credit.
His comments about Kris Commons and his family at the end of the game were magnificent. This is what great managers do; they know how to get the best out of people. It was fantastic to see Kris getting a medal along with the rest of the squad. That is a nice touch, the mark of Brendan’s class.
This achievement feels not only enormous but transformative. Brendan echoed my thoughts about us perhaps never seeing this done again, but there is definitely more to come from this team. As Neil Lennon said, “this is just the beginning.”
And what a beginning.
God help Scottish football when we get rolling next season.