Is Celtic’s next hero from the Academy squad already on the books?

There is something I have always found rather beautiful about Celtic bringing young players through the academy.

Perhaps it is because I am a romantic. Perhaps it is because I am a Celtic supporter and therefore naturally inclined towards a little bit of footballing poetry. Or perhaps it is simply because there is something wonderfully satisfying about watching a boy who has grown up dreaming of playing for Celtic actually begin to make people sit up and take notice.

And right now, I think we should be sitting up.

Because while Celtic have been busy looking elsewhere for talent, there is a young man already wearing the Hoops who is quietly making quite a lot of noise.

His name is Lucas Clearie. And I think Celtic supporters should remember that name. I’ve been watching his footage. As a CelticTV subscriber (my version of the season ticket) I’ve looked at as many games involving him as I can.

And he is impressive. I have watched enough football over the years to know that statistics alone do not make a footballer. Three goals in two Lowland League games does not automatically mean that somebody is going to become the next Celtic superstar. A hat-trick does not guarantee a career at Celtic Park.

But sometimes numbers are not merely numbers.

Sometimes they are little flashing lights. And Lucas Clearie has rather a lot of them flashing at the moment.

Clearie has made a storming beginning to the Lowland League campaign. He scored the young Hoops’ first goal of the season with a clinical header in the 3-2 defeat to Beith Juniors. Then came the 6-1 demolition of Clydebank, where he helped himself to two goals. Most recently, against Stranraer? A hat-trick.

Three goals. I mean, come on.

For a young Celtic player trying to establish himself, that is exactly the sort of thing I want to see. His hat-trick at Stranraer helped Celtic B win 4-3 in the Challenge Cup, with Clearie scoring twice from the spot before completing the treble late on.

And when I look at his wider record, it becomes even more interesting. He is already Celtic B’s leading league scorer this season.

Now, I am an English teacher, not a football statistician, but even I know that is a rather persuasive direction of travel. What particularly interests me about Clearie, though, is that it is not simply about the number of times he has found the net. His attributes suggest there is a proper footballer developing underneath those numbers.

He is sharp over the first few yards. He has the sort of movement I love seeing from a young forward. He plays off the shoulder, constantly looking to find that little pocket of space between defender and goalkeeper, and he appears to possess that instinctive understanding of where a striker needs to be.

And then there is his finishing. His goal catalogue already contains some lovely finishes with both feet. That matters. He’s got some skill-set.

I don’t want a young Celtic forward who needs everything placed perfectly onto one particular foot before he can do anything with it. I want somebody who can smell danger, move quickly, react instinctively and finish when the opportunity appears.

Clearie seems to have those ingredients.

And this is where I want to make a slightly bigger point.

Because I think Celtic supporters can sometimes fall into the trap of believing that the next great Celtic player must arrive from somewhere else.

We see a young player being linked from another country and immediately become fascinated. We hear a fee mentioned, see a compilation video, read about international appearances and suddenly we are convinced Celtic have discovered the next great thing.

And look, I am not against that. Far from it.

The boy from Chelsea, Shumaira Mheuka, looks excellent. I’ve written a couple of pieces o him and he looks like a genuinely exciting young prospect and I am very interested to see what he can become in the Hoops.

He was Premier League 2 Player of the Season last year after scoring 18 goals in 19 league appearances for Chelsea’s Under-21s.

But while we are looking at Shumaira and getting excited about what Celtic have brought through the door, I want Celtic to be absolutely certain that we are not overlooking the talent already standing on our own doorstep.

Because Lucas Clearie is one of those players I would be watching.

Very closely.

This is precisely why the academy matters. It is not there merely to produce players who can make up numbers in a squad. It is there to produce footballers who can eventually walk into Celtic Park and make supporters say, where did we find him?

Except, in Clearie’s case, we didn’t find him somewhere across Europe.

He was already ours. And that makes it all the more exciting.

Celtic have a wonderful history of academy graduates becoming important players. Callum McGregor is the obvious modern example, and James Forrest’s longevity is extraordinary. Kieran Tierney came through the academy and became one of the most recognisable Celtic defenders of his generation. Anthony Ralston, Stephen Welsh and Ross Doohan are further reminders that the pathway from the academy to the first team is real.

We don’t have enough of them, or players of the quality we’d like, but they are there and they are the template for everyone else.

Clearie himself was one of a group of academy youngsters handed professional terms by Celtic ahead of the 2025/26 season. But for that pathway to remain meaningful, Celtic have to actually look down it. That sounds obvious, doesn’t it?

Yet football has a funny habit of making simple things complicated.

Sometimes a club can spend millions searching for an answer that is already sitting within its own walls. I am not saying Lucas Clearie is ready to be thrown into a Champions League qualifier tomorrow. I am not saying that a burst of goals at B-team level means we should immediately build the Celtic attack around him.

That would be ridiculous.

Young footballers need development. They need patience. They need the right coaching, the right physical preparation and, perhaps most importantly, the right moments to step up. But I absolutely want Celtic watching. I want Celtic encouraging. I want Celtic testing him.

I want him given opportunities to train with better players, against better players, and to discover whether his Lowland League brilliance can survive when the football becomes faster, stronger and considerably less forgiving.

Because that is the real examination. And I rather suspect that Clearie will relish it.

There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about a young striker who just keeps scoring. He doesn’t need a complicated explanation. He puts the ball in the net. Again and again.

Then comes the hat-trick against Stranraer and suddenly people who weren’t paying attention are asking questions.

Who is this boy? Where has he come from? Can he make it?

Well, I don’t know yet. But I know this much: Lucas Clearie has earned our attention. And I would much rather Celtic discover what we have in him before deciding that we need to spend another fortune looking for somebody else.

That doesn’t mean we stop recruiting. It doesn’t mean every academy player is destined for Celtic’s first team. Football doesn’t work like that.

It means we give our own talent the respect it deserves. Because there is something magical about seeing a Celtic academy graduate pull on that first-team shirt for the first time.

The badge means something different when the boy wearing it has spent years dreaming of that moment. And perhaps, somewhere in Glasgow, there is a young Lucas Clearie dreaming exactly that dream. I hope he keeps dreaming.

More importantly, I hope he keeps scoring.

Because if he continues developing at anything like this rate, Celtic supporters might soon have another academy name to remember.

My English-teacher verdict? “Lucas Clearie is one to watch” is currently an understatement. The statistics are eye-catching, the movement is promising, the finishing is exciting and the potential is enormous. But the most important word in that sentence is potential.

Now Celtic have to help him turn that potential into something real.

And if they do? Well, perhaps the next Celtic attacking talent we fall in love with won’t have arrived from some glamorous foreign league at a multimillion-pound price.

Perhaps he will have been here all along.

And that, for me, would be rather beautiful.

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