Almost everyone in the creative industries has a fear they rarely talk about, but which is real enough, and it doesn’t matter whether they are an author or a painter or a song-writer or whatever. It’s the fear that you don’t really improve with age, that there’s a “window” on the peak of your talent, that your early work will forever be your best.
It’s not an iron clad rule.
Some of these people just get better and better as time goes on.
For others it rings horribly true.
Their initial work knocks it out of the park.
Many are cursed with real genius, manifesting itself in a masterpiece right at the start. They are the ones people talk about as savants, as generational miracles, as new Faulkner’s or Beethoven’s … and the crushing weight of that is only part of what ruins them.
It happens in professional sport too.
Some competitors flare and then fade.
Some show initial, dazzling, promise and just never live up to it.
That must haunt them like it haunts the creative types, and you never know who these players are going to be.
Yesterday was a topsy-turvy day in the Patrick Roberts transfer saga.
It’s fair to say that it started out with promise but quickly become one that had people banging their heads against the wall.
Roberts, we were told, was looking at other options. Doubtless many clubs are interested. I still felt that a deal might be done. Then Paul67 over on CQN dropped a bombshell; Celtic has moved on to other targets. We know Brendan will get it right.
I would have loved to have seen this deal done. We all would. But faith in the manager is at an all time high right now, and if he’s decided that we can’t wait for a deal to be struck then onward we must go. Because as fantastic a player as Patrick is, and as much as we want to see him wear the Hoops in the next campaign, well, like the song says, “time’s a wastin’” and we have to get on with things. Champions League qualifiers wait for no man.
Our own choice is no choice at all.
It’s Patrick who has the difficult, possibly even career defining, decision to make.
See, I believe what I said yesterday.
Patrick Roberts can still end up at Celtic Park.
If he wants the move then I do not believe that Manchester City can realistically stand in his way.
He has friends here, like young Kieran. He has a life here, and he could slip back into it easily, and comfortably. That must have an attraction for him, and as such, they won’t force him to sign for a club like Huddersfield. They won’t punt him abroad and not allow him the chance to play in a place where he’s known and respected, even loved. We know, for sure, that they won’t simply leave him to rot on the bench or in the reserves.
Patrick Roberts will earn big money in the game. More money than he can conceivably spend. He will be a multi-millionaire long before his career comes to an end. When the money is in the bank and a player looks back on his time in the sport, how will it be remembered?
For what’s in his current account, or for what’s in the trophy room?
Roberts is lucky in that sense.
Or perhaps not.
He has already been part of something incredible.
He’s played in front of 60,000 fans, he’s won titles, he’s been part of an Invincible team.
And the journey of that team is just starting.
Who knows what glory lies on the other side of the calendar? Who knows where we go from here, under Brendan Rodgers? There are signposts, and landmarks along the way, such as winning that seventh title, but this is a voyage of discovery.
What Patrick has to ask himself is this; will he ever have those days again?
Patrick Roberts is at the start of his career; this would be a truly dreadful time to have peaked.
He can certainly stay in England, that offer is open to him, and get the money but where will the real high points come? In individual games, maybe, but he’s been part of something magical that happened over a full season, with trophies and a place in the record books at the end of it.
How do you go from there to mid-table scrapping?
To relegation dogfights?
How do you ascend from playing in a wondrous tie like the one against his current club, at Celtic Park, in the Champions League, in front of the best fans in world football to a career of “settling for” lesser occasions and maybe never winning a major honour again?
Added to that, something else.
He saw “how it feels to be Celtic.”
No player who’s experienced it ever forgets it.
Many come to regret only that it didn’t last longer.
In a year where our greatest ever team was not only honoured but exalted, how can anybody in football not want a chance to be part of something like that? He’s an Invincible now; that means that from now until the end of his career he will never have to put a hand in his pocket in most parts of Glasgow again.
But the real glory is to be found in the shirt number he would have worn, the one that was graced by Larsson and Jinky, the mantle of the club icon.
Faberge made a special series of their famous eggs featuring Johnstone.
Celtic fans call Henrik Larsson “The King of Kings.”
As a footballer with an enormous talent, Patrick Roberts can be part of great teams.
But those guys stood out even amongst top class footballers.
Henrik was imperious that night in Seville. Jinky dazzled so much in the De Stefano game that the great man himself, knowing he’d been outshone on his own stage, on his own night, paid fulsome and sincere tribute to our wing wizard following the game and for years afterwards.
That takes more than just the right skill-set, it takes a special club to unleash that full potential and allow it to develop along its own path.
I believe Roberts can be one of those guys.
If he didn’t have self-belief he wouldn’t be at Manchester City, because no player would have gone there with everything they were involved in at the time without it. But they are willing to let him leave and that says it all. That dream is probably over, as sad as that is for him to accept.
But there are other dreams, and he will never find a club like Celtic if he plays in every corner of the world.
Our entire existence is part myth.
The magic you can feel in the air at certain times, in certain games, is real.
Celtic is where dreams become reality.
Every top footballer in the modern age is a celebrity. But Patrick was here for the Lisbon Lions anniversary, and so he knows that some become much more than that. Guys like them, they’ll never be forgotten. You can be a bit-part player at a small-town club that just so happens to play in the most hyped league in the world and in 20 years, when the career’s over, be just another ex-footballer, or you can remain a hero until the day you die.
Celtic has other options.
The Celtic Way will have new heroes, and every one of them will consider themselves blessed to be included on that avenue of legends.
Patrick Roberts also has options, as any novelist who wrote a first time bestseller does.
In football, as in the creative industries, it’s possible to peak too early so that everything that comes afterwards is dulled and blunted by comparison, and even with all the talent in the world you just never know.
Some fantastic footballers have gone their whole careers without ever winning a major honour … Roberts already has a bundle of them.
Is he luckier than they are? Or do you never miss what you never had?
What if they are his last?
Is last season as good as it’s going to get? Will it ever get that good again?
Why be a celebrity when you can be a hero?
Why be a hero when you can be a legend?
Why settle for being a legend when you can be an icon?
Not just a face on the cover of an annual, but a name etched in history.
Why settle for prosperity, when you can have immortality?
Celtic is entering a new era.
So is Patrick.
We’ve got a new page of history to write, and he has one big decision to make.
He can still be part of the journey.
But time is running out and we can’t afford to wait.