Somewhere, out there, playing his football right now, probably in a youth side or on the fringes of a first team, is a player we’re going to be boasting about watching play for Celtic for the whole of our natural lives. He isn’t here yet, but our scouting team is looking for him.
They may even know his name already.
But he will arrive here in due course.
When he signs on, it is almost inevitable that Brendan Rodgers will be his manager. He will walk into Celtic Park and into a dressing room where a handful of top talents already sits. Peerless amongst them will be Kieran Tierney, our captain.
The makeup of that room will be an odd one for fans of the team as we know them at the moment; a higher proportion of youth players than we’ve graduated since the 70’s. All will have already been blooded by at least one full SPL campaign.
This is three or four more years away. But I believe it will come.
It is the obvious next step; to construct a team centred around a core group of exceptional youth talents, and to keep that group together with the long haul in mind. Brendan will move on eventually, but even if he goes before that project is fully up and running you’d give him a role in picking his successor and time to work with the guy to make sure that it all went seamlessly.
This has been the model for dynastic football triumphs all across the world. Alex Ferguson did it at Manchester United, selling off expensive players which at the time included soon to be Rangers man Kanchelskis. The biggest shock was selling Paul Ince, The Guvnor, who most people believed was vital to the team. Ferguson already knew who would replace him; Roy Keane, who was still young but who you could tell was an immense talent.
With all the money in the world, Ferguson chose to construct the core of his team around youth; Butt, Scholes, Beckham, the Neville brothers. There were some misfires but for the most part he knew exactly what he was doing and time proved it.
Barcelona could have bought a team of the best footballers on Earth as Real Madrid were trying to do, but instead they put their faith in a handful of exceptional footballers who were already in the ranks. The results of that decision transformed football across the continent, and elevated the club to the pinnacle of European football and, eventually, formed the nucleus of a Spanish side that won both a European Championship and a World Cup.
I believe the work has already started. I believe Brendan and his backroom team have already identified the key elements from our youth squad and are looking, as we speak, for the handful of truly gifted foreign talents who can come in now and make an impact in two or three years.
We have the luxury of time, and we have the money to do it.
We are in competition with top clubs across Europe for those kids, but we have one sterling advantage that those clubs cannot match. We will play them in the first team. We will let them stand on their own two feet, early. We will forge them into a team and we will keep that team together and let it grow and develop and learn.
I believe that this is our future, and we’d already be seeing signs of it if we weren’t on our current unbeaten, Invincible, run. Before this season ends, I expect to see more of the youth players cracking the first team. When that happens, we’ll really be cooking.
The good times haven’t even started for this club yet.
We’ve got a generational opportunity here.
And we have the man at the helm who will take us to the next level.