This page tells Celtic’s story in full: the charitable founding and the man behind it; the first golden age under Willie Maley; the incomparable era of Jock Stein and the Lisbon Lions; the crisis and rescue of the 1990s; and the modern club that has dominated Scottish football into the 2020s. Along the way come the honours, the records, the stadium, the support and the answers to the questions people most often ask.
What is Celtic Football Club?
Celtic are a professional football club based in the East End of Glasgow, playing in the Scottish Premiership, the top division of Scottish football. Founded in 1887, they are among the most decorated clubs in the world, with more than a hundred major trophies to their name, and they command one of the largest and most travelled supporter bases in the game — drawn heavily from the worldwide Irish diaspora. Celtic have played in green and white throughout their history, at Celtic Park — ‘Paradise’ — since 1892.
Two things set Celtic apart. The first is their founding purpose: almost uniquely among the world’s great clubs, Celtic were established as a charity, to feed poor children. The second is 1967, when a team drawn entirely from in and around Glasgow became the first British club to win the European Cup. Both are woven through everything that follows.
Founded to feed the poor
Celtic were born of Victorian Glasgow’s poverty. The city’s East End held a large and desperately poor community of Irish-Catholic immigrants and their descendants, drawn to Clydeside by industry and, in many cases, driven from Ireland by the Great Famine — part of the wider Irish migration to Glasgow. Into that world came a Marist teaching brother with a plan to feed hungry children, and the idea that a football club might pay for it.
Brother Walfrid
Brother Walfrid was born Andrew Kerins in Ballymote, County Sligo, in 1840, and came to Glasgow as a young man to teach in the Catholic schools of the East End. Confronted daily by child hunger and poverty, he set up the ‘Poor Children’s Dinner Tables’ to provide meals — and, inspired partly by the example of the Edinburgh club Hibernian, founded by that city’s Irish community, he proposed a football club to raise the funds and rally the community behind them. On 6 November 1887, at a meeting in St Mary’s church hall in the Calton, Celtic Football Club was formed, with Walfrid and a committee of local businessmen and clergy — among them John Glass, later remembered as the club’s ‘father’ — at its head. A statue of Walfrid stands today outside Celtic Park, and the club’s charitable foundation continues his work.
The name and the Irish connection
The name ‘Celtic’ was Walfrid’s own choice, and a deliberate one: it joined Ireland and Scotland in a single word, expressing the shared Celtic heritage of both and refusing to make the new club narrowly one thing or the other. That double identity — Irish in origin, Scottish in home — has defined Celtic ever since. From the very beginning, though, the club signed and fielded players of all faiths and none, a tradition of openness it has always maintained.
The first match and the early years
Celtic played their first match on 28 May 1888, at the original Celtic Park, beating Rangers 5–2 in a friendly before around 2,000 spectators — the first act of the Old Firm rivalry, and a debut won with several players borrowed from Hibernian. Success came at once. Celtic reached the Scottish Cup final in 1889 and won the trophy for the first time in 1892, beating Queen’s Park 5–1 for the club’s first major honour. That year the club moved to a new, larger Celtic Park nearby, and in season 1892–93 won the Scottish league championship for the first time. In 1897 Celtic became a private limited company, and appointed the man who would shape its first great era.
Willie Maley and the first golden age
Willie Maley — a player in that first 1888 side — became Celtic’s first secretary-manager in 1897 and ran the club for an extraordinary forty-three years, until 1940. Under him Celtic became the dominant force in Scottish football. Between 1905 and 1910 they won the league championship six times in a row; in 1907 they became the first Scottish club to win the league and Scottish Cup double, and repeated it in 1908. During the First World War Celtic won four titles in a row and once went 62 matches unbeaten, between November 1915 and April 1917. It was in Maley’s time, too, in 1903, that the club adopted the green-and-white hoops it has worn ever since.
McGrory and the inter-war years
The 1920s and 1930s belonged, above all, to Jimmy McGrory. Signed in 1922, the East End-born centre-forward became one of the most prolific goalscorers in the history of British football, scoring 550 goals in all first-class matches over a sixteen-year career — long a British record — and 472 in major competitions for Celtic alone. The era also held tragedy: on 5 September 1931 Celtic’s brilliant young goalkeeper John Thomson died, aged 22, of head injuries suffered diving at the feet of a Rangers forward in an Old Firm match at Ibrox, one of the most mourned deaths in the club’s history. Celtic’s inter-war peak came in 1938, when they won the Empire Exhibition Trophy, a prestige tournament of leading British clubs held in Glasgow, beating Everton in the final.
The lean years and the Coronation Cup
The years after the Second World War were, by Celtic’s standards, lean — a long spell without the league title, and a club drifting. There were bright moments amid the disappointment: in 1953 Celtic won the Coronation Cup, a one-off tournament of the best clubs in Britain, beating Manchester United and then Hibernian; and in 1957 they thrashed Rangers 7–1 in the Scottish League Cup final, a record scoreline for a British cup final, remembered ever after as ‘Hampden in the Sun’. But sustained success required a change in the dugout — and in 1965 it came.
Jock Stein and the Lisbon Lions
The appointment of Jock Stein as manager in 1965 transformed Celtic. A former Celtic captain, Stein was a tactical innovator and a force of personality, and he turned an underachieving side into the greatest in the club’s history almost overnight.
The 1967 European Cup
The summit came on 25 May 1967 at the Estádio Nacional in Lisbon. Celtic, in their first-ever European Cup campaign, faced Internazionale of Milan — the masters of defensive catenaccio football and twice recent European champions. Inter scored an early penalty; Celtic, attacking relentlessly, equalised through a thunderous Tommy Gemmell drive and won it near the end through Stevie Chalmers, 2–1. They had become the first British club, and the first from outside Spain, Portugal or Italy, to win the European Cup. The team that did it — Simpson, Craig, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and Lennox — are immortal as the Lisbon Lions, and every one of them was born within about thirty miles of Celtic Park, a feat no European champion will ever repeat. That same season Celtic won every competition they entered.
Nine in a row
Lisbon was the jewel of a period of total domestic dominance. Between 1965–66 and 1973–74 Celtic won nine consecutive Scottish league titles — a British record at the time — along with a string of cups. They reached a second European Cup final in 1970, losing surprisingly to Feyenoord, but the era’s achievements, built around home-grown players such as Jimmy Johnstone, Billy McNeill, Bobby Murdoch and Bobby Lennox, remain the benchmark against which every Celtic side is measured. Stein left in 1978 having won ten league titles, eight Scottish Cups and the European Cup.
Dalglish, McNeill and the eighties
The Stein years also produced Kenny Dalglish, who emerged as one of the finest forwards Britain has produced before his record move to Liverpool in 1977, and Danny McGrain, among the great full-backs of his generation. After Stein, his old captain Billy McNeill took charge and kept Celtic winning, delivering further league titles and cups. The decade’s crowning moment came in 1988, the club’s centenary year, when McNeill’s side won the league and Scottish Cup double — a fairytale hundredth season.
Crisis and rescue: Fergus McCann
The early 1990s brought Celtic to the brink. Years of underinvestment and boardroom drift left the club deep in debt, out of the running domestically as Rangers dominated, and, by March 1994, reportedly days from bankruptcy. Rescue came from the Scottish-Canadian businessman Fergus McCann, who took control, stabilised the finances through a share issue that engaged the support, and rebuilt Celtic Park into a modern all-seater stadium holding around 60,000 — the largest in Scotland. McCann’s stewardship was not always loved at the time, but it saved the club and built the platform for everything that followed. In 1998, under Wim Jansen, Celtic won the league to halt Rangers’ bid for a tenth successive title.
Martin O’Neill, Larsson and Seville
The arrival of Martin O’Neill as manager in 2000 began a thrilling new era. O’Neill’s Celtic won the domestic treble in his first season and three league titles in five years, playing bold, front-foot football led by the Swedish striker Henrik Larsson, one of the greatest players of the club’s modern history, who scored 242 goals for Celtic. The high point came in Europe: in 2003 Celtic reached the UEFA Cup final in Seville, losing 3–2 to Porto after extra time, with Larsson scoring twice. An estimated 80,000 Celtic supporters travelled to Spain, and the good-humoured invasion earned the club a special fair-play award — a defining moment in the story of the modern Celtic support.
The modern Celtic
The twenty-first century has been, overwhelmingly, Celtic’s. Gordon Strachan won three titles in the later 2000s; Neil Lennon added more, and gave the club one of its greatest European nights, a 2–1 Champions League defeat of Barcelona in 2012. Under Brendan Rodgers from 2016 Celtic reached new heights of domestic dominance, going through an entire season unbeaten to complete an ‘invincible’ domestic treble in 2016–17 and matching the nine-in-a-row record by 2020. Ange Postecoglou revived the club with fast, attacking football and a treble before leaving for the Premier League in 2023, and Rodgers returned to win further titles.
The most turbulent chapter came in 2025–26. Rodgers resigned in October 2025; the club’s next appointment, Wilfried Nancy, lasted only weeks; and in the drama the veteran Martin O’Neill returned — first as caretaker, twenty years after his first spell, then permanently — and steadied the club to a domestic double, and a 56th league title, in 2025–26. Through all the change, one fact has held: Celtic remain the dominant force in Scottish football, and one of the great names of the European game.
Honours
Celtic are one of only a handful of clubs in the world to have won more than a hundred major trophies. They hold the Scottish records for league titles and Scottish Cups, and a world record for domestic trebles.
| Competition | Wins | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scottish league title | 56 | A Scottish record |
| Scottish Cup | 43 | A Scottish record |
| Scottish League Cup | 22 | — |
| European Cup | 1 | 1967 — first British winner |
| Domestic trebles | 8 | A world record |
Club records
A century and a half of football has left Celtic with a set of records held by some of the greatest names in the club’s history.
| Record | Holder |
|---|---|
| Most appearances | Billy McNeill — ~790 |
| Record goalscorer | Jimmy McGrory — 472 (550 in all first-class football) |
| Record European goalscorer | Henrik Larsson — 35 |
| Most European appearances | Scott Brown — 127 |
| Record league win | 11–0 v Dundee, 1895 |
| Record European home crowd | 136,505 v Leeds United, 1970 |
The greatest Celtic players
Celtic supporters, in a 2002 poll, voted the tiny, mercurial winger Jimmy Johnstone — ‘Jinky’ — the club’s greatest-ever player. Around him stands a pantheon: the record scorer Jimmy McGrory and the earlier genius Patsy Gallacher; the captain of Lisbon, Billy McNeill, and his fellow Lions Bobby Murdoch and Bobby Lennox; the young Kenny Dalglish and the great full-back Danny McGrain; and, in the modern era, the talismanic Henrik Larsson and the long-serving captain Scott Brown. Few clubs anywhere have fielded so many players of the first rank.
Legendary managers
Celtic’s story has been shaped from the dugout by two towering figures above all — Willie Maley, who built the club across forty-three years, and Jock Stein, who conquered Europe — along with a line of modern winners.
| Manager | Era | Best remembered for |
|---|---|---|
| Willie Maley | 1897–1940 | First and longest-serving manager; the club’s first golden age |
| Jimmy McGrory | 1945–65 | Club legend as player and manager |
| Jock Stein | 1965–78 | The European Cup, 1967; nine titles in a row |
| Billy McNeill | 1978–83, 1987–91 | The centenary Double of 1988 |
| Martin O’Neill | 2000–05, 2025– | Trebles, the 2003 Seville final and a dramatic return |
| Brendan Rodgers | 2016–19, 2023–25 | An ‘invincible’ unbeaten domestic Treble |
| Ange Postecoglou | 2021–23 | Rapid revival and a treble |
Celtic Park
Celtic have played at Celtic Park, in the Parkhead district of the East End, since 1892 — the second ground of that name, moved to in the club’s early years. Nicknamed ‘Paradise’, supposedly after a journalist described the move to it as ‘like leaving the graveyard to enter Paradise’, it was rebuilt as an all-seater stadium in the 1990s under Fergus McCann and now holds just over 60,000, making it the largest football stadium in Scotland. Its great banks of green seats, and the wall of noise they produce on European nights, are among the most famous sights and sounds in British football.
The Celtic support and identity
Celtic’s support is among the largest, most passionate and most travelled in world football, rooted in Glasgow and the west of Scotland but extending across the Irish diaspora and far beyond — with supporters’ clubs in their hundreds around the globe. The club’s Irish-Catholic origins remain central to its identity, expressed in the green and the shamrock crest, while the modern Celtic presents itself as a club open to all. Anthems such as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, the songs and choreography of the ultras, and the enduring charitable mission carried on by the Celtic FC Foundation are all part of what supporters call the Celtic family — a sense of belonging that goes well beyond football.
The Old Firm
No account of Celtic is complete without Rangers. The two clubs’ rivalry, the Old Firm, is one of the oldest and most intense in the world game, contested since that first meeting in 1888 and bound up with the religious, national and political divisions of the west of Scotland, treated more fully on this site’s page on religious conflict in Glasgow. It has given Celtic some of their greatest days and their darkest, and it remains the fixture by which the Scottish season is measured.
Interesting facts and lesser-known stories
- The first goal. Neil McCallum scored Celtic’s first-ever goal, in that opening 5–2 win over Rangers on 28 May 1888.
- Born within thirty miles. Every member of the 1967 European Cup-winning squad was born within about thirty miles of Celtic Park — the Lisbon Lions were, quite literally, a local team that conquered Europe.
- A world-record crowd. The 1937 Scottish Cup final, which Celtic won against Aberdeen, drew 147,365 to Hampden — still a world record attendance for a national cup final.
- Sixty-two unbeaten. During the First World War Celtic went 62 matches without defeat, between November 1915 and April 1917.
- Founded for charity. Almost alone among the world’s great clubs, Celtic were established not for sport or profit but to feed poor children — a mission the club’s foundation still honours.
- A women’s Celtic. Celtic F.C. Women, founded in 2007, contest their own Old Firm matches and are part of the growing story of the women’s game in Scotland.
Timeline of significant events
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1887 | Celtic founded in St Mary’s hall, the Calton, by Brother Walfrid |
| 1888 | First match, 28 May — Celtic beat Rangers 5–2 |
| 1892 | First Scottish Cup; the club moves to the present Celtic Park |
| 1893 | First Scottish league championship |
| 1897 | Celtic become a limited company; Willie Maley appointed manager |
| 1903 | The green-and-white hoops adopted |
| 1905–10 | Six league titles in a row; the first Scottish double, 1907 |
| 1938 | Celtic win the Empire Exhibition Trophy |
| 1953 | The Coronation Cup won against Britain’s best |
| 1965 | Jock Stein appointed manager |
| 1967 | European Cup won in Lisbon; a clean sweep of every competition |
| 1974 | A ninth successive league title completes nine-in-a-row |
| 1988 | League and Cup double in the club’s centenary year |
| 1994 | Fergus McCann takes over and saves the club |
| 1998 | A title that halts Rangers’ bid for ten in a row |
| 2003 | Celtic reach the UEFA Cup final in Seville |
| 2017 | An unbeaten ‘invincible’ domestic Treble under Brendan Rodgers |
| 2020 | A second nine-in-a-row completed |
| 2026 | Martin O’Neill returns and leads Celtic to a 56th title |
Frequently asked questions
When was Celtic founded?
Celtic Football Club was founded on 6 November 1887, at a meeting in St Mary’s church hall in the Calton district of Glasgow’s East End. The club played its first match the following spring, on 28 May 1888.
Who founded Celtic?
The driving force was Brother Walfrid, a Marist teaching brother born Andrew Kerins in Ballymote, County Sligo, Ireland. He was helped by a committee of local businessmen and clergy from the East End’s Irish-Catholic community, among them John Glass, often called the club’s ‘father’.
Why was Celtic founded?
For charity, not sport. Brother Walfrid’s aim was to raise money to feed the poor children of Glasgow’s East End through his ‘Poor Children’s Dinner Tables’, and to give the impoverished Irish-Catholic immigrant community a source of pride and cohesion. Football was the means; the dinner tables were the end.
What does the name ‘Celtic’ mean?
The name was Brother Walfrid’s own choice, intended to express the club’s joint Irish and Scottish roots — ‘Celtic’ nodding to the shared Celtic heritage of both nations. In Britain the club’s name is pronounced with a soft ‘s’ (‘Seltic’), unlike the hard-‘c’ pronunciation used for the ethnic and linguistic term.
Who did Celtic play in their first match?
Rangers. Celtic’s very first match, on 28 May 1888 at the original Celtic Park, was a friendly against Rangers, which Celtic won 5–2. Neil McCallum scored the club’s first-ever goal. It was the beginning of the Old Firm rivalry.
Where is Celtic Park?
Celtic Park is in the Parkhead area of Glasgow’s East End, where the club has played since 1892. Known to supporters as ‘Paradise’, it holds around 60,000 and is the largest football stadium in Scotland.
What is Celtic’s nickname?
Celtic are known as the Bhoys, the Hoops (after their green-and-white hooped shirts) and the Celts. Their ground is called Paradise. The club’s colours have been green and white throughout its history.
Why do Celtic wear green and white hoops?
Green has always signified the club’s Irish heritage. Celtic first played in white shirts with a green collar, tried green-and-white vertical stripes, and in 1903 adopted the green-and-white horizontal hoops that have been the club’s hallmark ever since.
When did Celtic win the European Cup?
On 25 May 1967, when Celtic beat Internazionale of Milan 2–1 in the final in Lisbon to become the first British club — and the first from outside Spain, Portugal or Italy — to win the European Cup. Goals from Tommy Gemmell and Stevie Chalmers overturned an early Inter penalty.
Who were the Lisbon Lions?
The Lisbon Lions are the Celtic team that won the 1967 European Cup: Simpson, Craig, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Clark, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld and Lennox, managed by Jock Stein. Famously, every member of the squad was born within about thirty miles of Celtic Park — something no European champion is ever likely to match.
How many league titles have Celtic won?
Celtic have won the Scottish league championship a record 56 times, as of the end of the 2025–26 season — more than any other club in Scotland.
How many trophies have Celtic won?
Celtic are one of only a handful of clubs in the world to have won more than a hundred major trophies. As of 2025–26 the total includes 56 league titles, a record 43 Scottish Cups, 22 Scottish League Cups and the 1967 European Cup, along with a world-record eight domestic trebles.
Who is Celtic’s record goalscorer?
Jimmy McGrory, who scored 472 goals in major competitions for Celtic in the 1920s and 1930s — and a remarkable 550 in all first-class football, long a British record. He remains one of the most prolific goalscorers in the history of the British game.
Who has made the most appearances for Celtic?
Billy McNeill, the captain of the Lisbon Lions, holds the club’s appearance record — around 790 in major competitions across an eighteen-year career from 1957 to 1975.
Who is Celtic’s greatest ever player?
In a 2002 supporters’ poll, Celtic fans voted the mesmeric winger Jimmy Johnstone — ‘Jinky’ — the club’s greatest-ever player. Other legends include Jimmy McGrory, Billy McNeill, Kenny Dalglish, Patsy Gallacher and Henrik Larsson.
Who was Jock Stein?
A former Celtic captain who became the club’s greatest manager. Appointed in 1965, Stein transformed Celtic, winning the 1967 European Cup and nine successive league titles between 1966 and 1974. He is regarded as one of the finest managers in the history of British football.
What is ‘nine in a row’?
It refers to Celtic winning nine consecutive Scottish league titles under Jock Stein, from 1965–66 to 1973–74 — a British record at the time, later equalled by Rangers, and one Celtic themselves matched again between 2011–12 and 2019–20.
Who saved Celtic in 1994?
The Scottish-Canadian businessman Fergus McCann, who took control of the club in March 1994 when it was days from bankruptcy. McCann stabilised Celtic’s finances and rebuilt Celtic Park into a modern 60,000-seat stadium, laying the foundations for the club’s revival.
What happened in Seville in 2003?
Celtic reached the 2003 UEFA Cup final, played in Seville on 21 May, losing 3–2 to Porto after extra time. Henrik Larsson scored twice. An estimated 80,000 Celtic supporters travelled to Spain, and their good humour earned the club a special FIFA and UEFA fair-play award.
Who is Celtic’s manager?
Martin O’Neill. After Brendan Rodgers resigned in October 2025 and Wilfried Nancy’s brief spell ended in January 2026, O’Neill — who had first managed the club from 2000 to 2005 — returned, initially as caretaker and then permanently, leading Celtic to a domestic double in 2025–26. Managerial situations change, so it is always worth checking the latest news.
Are Celtic a Catholic or Irish club?
Celtic were founded by and for Glasgow’s Irish-Catholic community, and that heritage remains central to the club’s identity and support. From the outset, however, Celtic signed and fielded players of all faiths and backgrounds, and the modern club describes itself as open to all, while continuing to honour its Irish roots.
What is the Old Firm?
The Old Firm is the collective name for Celtic and Rangers and, especially, for the fierce rivalry between the two Glasgow clubs — one of the oldest and most intense in world football, bound up with the religious, national and political divisions of the west of Scotland.
How big is Celtic Park?
Celtic Park holds just over 60,000, making it the largest football stadium in Scotland and one of the biggest in the United Kingdom. It was rebuilt as an all-seater ground in the 1990s under Fergus McCann.
Who was Brother Walfrid?
Brother Walfrid (Andrew Kerins, 1840–1915) was a Marist teaching brother from County Sligo who founded Celtic in 1887 to raise money to feed poor children in Glasgow’s East End. A statue of him stands outside Celtic Park, and the club’s charitable foundation continues his work.
What is a treble, and how many have Celtic won?
A domestic treble is winning the league, the Scottish Cup and the Scottish League Cup in a single season. Celtic have done it a world-record eight times, including an unprecedented ‘quadruple treble’ — four in a row — between 2016–17 and 2019–20.
What is Celtic’s biggest ever win?
Celtic’s record league win is an 11–0 victory over Dundee in 1895. Their biggest European win is 9–0 against KPV Kokkola of Finland in the European Cup in 1970, and their record Old Firm win the famous 7–1 defeat of Rangers in the 1957 League Cup final.
Who is Henrik Larsson?
A Swedish striker who is one of the greatest players of Celtic’s modern era. Between 1997 and 2004 he scored 242 goals for the club, including two in the 2003 Seville final, and he remains Celtic’s record goalscorer in European competition.
Have Celtic ever played in England or abroad competitively?
Not in league football. Celtic play in the Scottish league system and meet English and continental clubs only in European competition and friendlies. Proposals over the years for the Old Firm to join an English or cross-border league have never come to pass.
What league do Celtic play in?
Celtic play in the Scottish Premiership, the top division of Scottish football, which they have dominated for most of the twenty-first century. They were founding members of the Scottish Football League in 1890.
What is the Celtic crest?
The modern Celtic crest is a green four-leaf clover on a white roundel, encircled by the club’s name and, since a 1977 redesign, framed in the club’s green. The shamrock underlines the Irish heritage at the heart of the club.
When did Celtic first win the league?
In season 1892–93, the first championship after the club moved to its new Celtic Park — the beginning of a dominance of Scottish football that has continued, with interruptions, ever since.
Who is the most successful Celtic manager?
By trophies and legend, Jock Stein, who won ten league titles, eight Scottish Cups and the European Cup between 1965 and 1978. In the modern era, Brendan Rodgers, Ange Postecoglou and Martin O’Neill have all enjoyed major success.
What is Paradise?
‘Paradise’ is the affectionate nickname for Celtic Park, said to date from the club’s move to the ground in 1892, when a journalist described leaving the old pitch for the new one as ‘like leaving the graveyard to enter Paradise’.
Did a Celtic player die during a match?
Yes. Celtic’s young goalkeeper John Thomson died on 5 September 1931, aged 22, of head injuries suffered diving at the feet of a Rangers forward in an Old Firm match at Ibrox. He is one of the most mourned figures in the club’s history.
What was the Empire Exhibition Trophy?
A prestigious tournament held in Glasgow in 1938 alongside the British Empire Exhibition, contested by leading Scottish and English clubs. Celtic won it, beating Everton in the final — a celebrated triumph of the club’s inter-war era.
From a church hall in the Calton to the summit of Europe, Celtic’s story is one of the most remarkable in football — a club founded to feed the hungry that became a byword for attacking football, a global support and one of the game’s great institutions. Brother Walfrid’s statue still stands at the gates of Paradise, a reminder of why it all began.