Battle of The Legends - Celtic v Manchester United
By: Newsroom Staff on 01 Jul, 2011
CELTIC Football Club is delighted to announce the Battle of The Legends match – Celtic Legends v Manchester United Legends on Tuesday, August 9.
This unique charity match which has a 7.45 kick-off time will see a host of former players together with a number of celebrity fans from both sides battle it out on the pitch at Celtic Park.
We are delighted to have a number of legends already confirmed to take part. For Celtic - Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton, Lubo Moravcik and the current management team of Neil Lennon, Johan Mjallby and Alan Thompson.
On the Manchester United side Teddy Sheringham, Dwight Yorke and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer have all signed up.
Henrik Larsson said: “It will be a tremendous pleasure to return to Celtic Park and play in this charity match in front of the best fans in the world.
“I played for seven incredible years in Glasgow and can’t wait to get back and pull on the green and white Hoops once again.”
Dwight Yorke said: “It’s always a pleasure pulling on the red jersey and having had a look at the team lists, this is shaping up to be a great game of football.
“The Celtic team is a who's who of top legends and some very interesting celebs are making an appearance too.
“But just because this is a charity match doesn't mean we are coming up to make up the numbers
“We have top Man United legends and a great squad of celebrities from music, film, TV and sport in our team, who can all play a bit.
“I know that Henrik always gets an amazing reception at Celtic Park and it’s great that he’s flying in for the game. It’s going to be an amazing atmosphere up there.”
General Tickets are on sale now from Celtic Ticket Office 0871 226 1888* and http://www.celticfc.net/tickets_home with premium and corporate tickets also available.
Cost of the general tickets will be £10 for adults and £5 for children.
Proceeds of the game will be split between John Kennedy and Celtic Charity Fund.
that looks like a great line up, these things are usually "legends" of the lowest order, it will be great to see henrick in a Celtic shirt. It's just a pity Celtic don't have another one like him today.
CELTIC will travel to Wales on August 3 for a pre-season friendly against newly promoted Premiership side Swansea City.
The former rivals of Joe Ledley and Adam Matthews, who both signed for the Hoops from Cardiff City, will host Celtic three days after the Dublin Cup in Ireland.
The match will kick-off at the Liberty Stadium at 7pm and will provide Neil Lennon’s men with another run-out ahead of the Europa League first-leg play-off a fortnight later.
Swansea will make history next month when season 2011/12 kicks-off as the first non-English club to play in the Premiership.
They won promotion in last year’s play-offs against Nottingham Forest and then Reading, after finishing third in the Championship.
Celtic youth academy graduate Craig Beattie, who played for the Hoops first-team between 2003-07, moved to Swansea two years ago and has featured regularly for Brendan Rodgers’ side since.
Swansea is also the birthplace of Celtic legend John Hartson while John Hughes played for the Welsh side for a season before joining the Hoops in the 1990s.
This will be the first meeting between the sides, four days before Celtic return to domestic action, taking on Aberdeen at Pittodrie, in the SPL, on August 7.
Tickets are priced at £25 for adults and £12.50 for concessions.
CELTIC will take on former Celt Malky Mackay’s new club Cardiff City, in a pre-season friendly on Wednesday, July 20.
The former defender, who played for the Hoops between 1993-98, took charge of the Welsh side less than a month ago after two seasons at Watford.
The meeting will take place a fortnight before the Hoops travel to Wales for a friendly against Swansea City and will kick-off at 7.45 in the Cardiff City Stadium.
Former Bluebirds, Joe Ledley and Adam Matthews will return to their old hunting grounds with Celtic, four days before the 2011/12 campaign kicks-off against Hibernian.
The last time Celtic played Cardiff was in the summer of 2009 when they recorded a goal-less draw the afternoon they opened the new stadium.
A year previously, the Hoops lost to 1-0 to Cardiff in the second game of the Algarve Cup.
Tickets are priced at £15 for adults, £10 for concessions, £5 for Under-16s and £1 for Under-9s.
OUT of every player returning for the Battle Of The Legends match against Manchester United next month, few will have more memories of their time at Celtic than Jackie McNamara.
The former captain played in the green and white for a decade, during which time he was part of four league title wins, he lifted two Scottish Cups, two League Cups, a clutch of Player of the Year awards and played in the UEFA Cup final in Seville.
McNamara will return to Paradise on Tuesday, August 9 to pull on the Hoops once more, this time in tribute to John Kennedy, alongside an army of ex-team-mates.
He will be joined by Pierre van Hooijdonk and Simon Donnelly, who he played with in 1998 when Celtic stopped the 10, Lubo Moravcik and Chris Sutton, team-mates from the Treble-winning season in 2000/01 and Henrik Larsson and John Hartson, who shared the road to Seville with him in 2003.
And the new manager of Partick Thistle is excited about teaming up with his former dressing room buddies.
“I’m looking forward to it but I’ll need to make sure I’m fit enough to play!” he told the official Celtic website.
“I’ll need to do an extra few training sessions to keep me ticking over. I’ve done a lot since I stopped in the summer and I’ve been doing a lot to keep myself on my toes. It will be good to get back into it again though.
“There were a lot of good guys in the team when I played at Celtic and I have a lot of friends who were there at the time so it will be good to meet up again.”
McNamara even joked that he will have to get some managerial favours from some of them now he too has hung up his playing boots.
“Some tips and some players from them would be nice!” he laughed. “But in all seriousness it says a lot that so many of us are getting our chance in management now and hopefully we can all do well.
“Paul Lambert has been excellent down the road and Lenny is doing well. Thommo and Johan are obviously there and big Sutty and Henrik have also had a taste of it.
“It was a great dressing room we had and it’s interesting to see how many guys have taken things on from that, it’s quite pleasing.”
Tom Boyd, Bobby Petta and Momo Sylla will also return to Celtic Park for the fixture against the Manchester United legends, but while he will enjoy the reunion, McNamara is there for a more important reason.
The match will pay tribute to John Kennedy, who had his career cruelly cut short after failing to fully recover from a horrific tackle in 2004. After five years of battling fitness and numerous operations, the defender was forced out of the game and now works in Celtic’s scouting department.
The game, which was originally scheduled for the end of the 2010/11 season will now see the legends of Celtic and Manchester United come face-to-face next month and McNamara is pleased he will be there to honour Kennedy.
“I’m delighted for John because he’s a good lad and it was really tragic what happened to him since he broke in at the start of his career,” he said. “He was doing well but it was cut short and he was very unfortunate.
“He was very quick at breaking in. We trained with him so we knew he could play and he got his chance against Barcelona. Then he played the Rangers game and made his debut for Scotland, so within a week he’d played in the big derby, at the Camp Nou and on the international stage.
“But he had that tackle in the international game that inevitably finished his career. It was a horrendous challenge.
“At the time everyone thought he was doing well getting back from that tackle because of the amount of operations he had to go through.
"There was nobody who worked harder to get back, but the extent of the injury was too much."
Tickets are now on general sale priced £10 Adult and £5 Concession. Click HERE to purchase tickets online, call 0871 226 1888* or by visit the Celtic Ticket Office.
Tickets are also available in the following retail outlets:-
Argyle Street
Sauchiehall Street
Clydebank
Coatbridge
Edinburgh
East Kilbride
Celtic Superstore, Celtic Park
Proceeds of the game will be split between John Kennedy and Celtic Charity Fund.
* Calls cost up to 10p per minute, telecoms provider dependent. Mobile and other provider charges may vary.
THE Celtic Youth Academy have secured the signatures of two young Irish internationalists, who will join the club’s Under-16 squad next summer.
Central defenders Shane Dineed from Waterford and Fiacre Kelleher from Cork signed pre-contracts from their clubs, Ferrybank FC and Avondale United respectively.
And with Richie Towell and Graham Carey the latest Irish Bhoys to break into the first-team, Head of Youth, Chris McCart, is keen to continue relations across the water.
“You can go back to Liam Miller, Darren O’Dea and Colin Healy and look at their progression,” McCart exclusively told the official website. “You can see that Celtic have a good history in selecting Irish players and bringing them through the ranks.
“We’ve targeted Ireland in the past. The youth players we have coming through have predominantly been from Scotland and Ireland so we see it as an excellent area for selecting players.
“The history tells us they have a very good chance of making it to our first-team. We’re looking to achieve the best talent from Ireland despite having to compete with all the top English clubs.
“I believe that when you look back over the last seven or eight years it has been predominately Irish players who have broken through.
“We’ve got to look at that, the cultures are very similar and the Irish players seem to adapt very easily to the Scottish game and to the Scottish society. They seem to fit in well and it allows them to develop better towards the first-team.”
The two 15-year-olds are players McCart has had his eye on for a while and he believes they can develop into first-team players over the coming years.
The development of Dineed and Kelleher is also vital to the overall central defence at the club as it is one of the positions McCart is keen to build on throughout the youth ranks.
“Developing goalkeepers and centre halves are two areas we’re working hard to improve on,” he said.
“Darren O’Dea, John Kennedy and Stephen McManus were the last central defenders the club identified coming through the ranks.
“We seem to be developing players capable of playing for the first-team in different positions but the centre halves and goalkeepers are areas we’ve been working on closely in recent years.”
And while the move to Glasgow can be a daunting experience for the youngsters, McCart was also pleased to see they are excited about their challenge which lies ahead.
The club works hard to help incoming players settle and focus on all avenues when it comes to moving to a new city.
“It’s a holistic approach regarding the philosophy of the move,” McCart explained. “We look at their welfare, their education, reassure their parents they are well looked after by families in digs and accommodation.
“From there we can offer the best of coaching and the best of facilities at Lennoxtown, so they’re coming into a really good environment.
“They are both absolutely delighted. They are Celtic fans and so are their families. Although in Ireland the English Premier League is what is shown on TV over there so they are used to seeing the teams from down south.
“They don’t get a lot of Scottish football outwith Dublin and Belfast so this is good for giving a message that Celtic are very active across all of Ireland.”
And despite emphasising his desire for Irish players, McCart has reassured the homegrown talent they are still a priority.
“We’re looking to sign more from Ireland but the scouting philosophy is still to look at Glasgow first,” he said.
“We then move from Glasgow to the whole of Scotland and if we can’t find players there we will move on to Ireland and England.
“The core of our scouting recruitment is around Glasgow and we take it from there because we can’t lose sight of the local players.
“They shouldn’t be disheartened, because our focus is on the Scottish players but we have to look to ********** that.”
CELTIC Football Club is delighted to announce the signing of Victor Wanyama on a four- year deal following Governing Body Endorsement granted by the SFA.
Victor completed his medical earlier today and will now return to Belgium to obtain the relevant entry visa.
Victor Wanyama said: “I am delighted to sign for Celtic Football Club. With the formalities now out of the way, I can look forward to meeting up with my new team-mates and manager on their return from Australia.
“ It has always been a dream of mine to play for a club like Celtic. After reading the club’s incredible history I have chosen 67 as my squad number to show appreciation to the 1967 squad.
“My ambition at Celtic is to win many trophies like the Lisbon Lions.”
Neil Lennon added: “It’s fantastic news that Victor has now signed for Celtic. He will be an important addition to the squad and I look forward to him joining up with the boys on our return from Australia.”
Pre-season friendly
NIB Stadium, Perth, Australia
Saturday, July 9, 2011
CELTIC…2
Hooper 16, Mulgrew 51
PERTH GLORY…0
CELTIC registered their first victory of the pre-season tour of Australia with a convincing 2-0 triumph over Perth Glory on Saturday night.
Gary Hooper opened the scoring with a composed finish just past the quarter hour mark as Neil Lennon’s men started the match with real purpose.
A glancing header from Charlie Mulgrew after half-time sealed the spoils, sending the raucous Celtic support home happy.
With a week of intense training under their belts, following the first match of the tour against Central Coast Mariners, the Hoops started with a markedly greater urgency and soon had the home side on the back foot.
A raking pass over Kris Commons set Anthony Stokes racing into the box but the striker was unable to keep the ball in play with several defenders in close attendance.
Commons was involved once again, robbing his opposite number opposite number, Scott Neville, but watched as his low cross for Hooper was hacked behind for a corner.
And it was from corners that Neil Lennon’s men created their next chances, Scott Brown and Mark Wilson, forcing Danny Vukovic into two good stops with near-post headers.
Both Stokes and Commons came close from free-kicks as the Hoops upped the ante. It was one-way traffic and finally in the 16th minute it paid dividends.
Fast and fluent, Celtic had been playing some terrific stuff in the opening spell but it was from the direct route they went ahead. Glenn Loovens thumped a long ball over the top of the Perth side’s defence.
They dithered – Hooper didn’t. Beating the offside trap, he advanced on Vukovic, before coolly sliding the ball under the keeper and into the corner.
Ian Ferguson’s side finally mustered up a response when former-Celt, Liam Miller, found Mile Sterjokvski with a clever chip into the box but the midfielder fluffed his effort with only Lukasz Zaluska to beat.
Some good persistence from Miller gave him an eye of goal, shortly after, but he could only fire over.
The match had been an entertaining affair with plenty of attacking endeavour from either side for the bumper crowd to enjoy, however, a facial injury to Beram Kayal, following a mid-air collision, saw a four minute stoppage as the Israeli received treatment.
Frustratingly for the midfielder it forced him from the action. Shaun Maloney was his replacement.
That disruption sapped the pace out of the game and it was not until after the break that there was some tangible goalmouth excitement.
Maloney had been an energetic presence in the final third since his introduction, and another enterprising run down the left from the winger crafted a golden chance for Stokes – but the striker goalbound attempt was blocked.
However, it didn’t take long for Celtic to double their advantage. Ki, who had entered the fray at the interval, delivered an accurate free-kick into the box from the left and Mulgrew rose highest to flick a header into the far corner.
Conceding a second goal seemed to deflate the home side, who, to be fair, had emerged with more zeal at half-time, and they never looked like seriously troubling the Hoops for the remainder of the half.
Indeed, it was Celtic – despite several substitutions – that looked the more likely to add to their tally, with Stokes and Ledley missing the target after some fine sweeping attacks, and Paddy McCourt always looking threatening in the final third.
It wasn’t until the final few minutes until the visitors managed to trouble an assured Celtic rearguard again.
A ricochet on the edge of the area presented Alex Caniglia with a clear sight of goal but he dragged his shot wide, before Adam Teggert was foiled through some great recovery work from Glenn Loovens as he raced in on goal. It would be the final incident of the match.
With a confidence-boosting win, and another valuable 90 minutes under their belts, Celtic now head into Melbourne for their final fixture of tour down under.
CELTIC (4-4-2) Zaluska; M. Wilson (Cha 45), K. Wilson, Loovens, Mulgrew; Brown (Matthews 83), Kayal (Maloney 34), Ledley, Commons (Ki 45); Hooper (McCourt 64) Stokes (Murphy 71)
Not Used: Cervi, Majstorovic, Samaras
PERTH GLORY (4-4-2) Vukovic; Neville, Van Den Brink, Mitchell, Howarth; Hughes, Burns (Quaqua 85); Dodd (Amphlett 83) Miller (McGarry 45) Stejokvski (Caniglia 54); Smeltz (Teggert 45).
Pre-season friendly
AAMI Park, Melbourne
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
CELTIC…1
Brown 78
MELBOURNE VICTORY…0
A LATE goal from Scott Brown handed Celtic the spoils against Melbourne Victory in their final match of the Australian pre-season tour.
The midfielder struck with just over 10 minutes remaining, finding the corner of the net via a deflection after Kris Commons had picked him out on the edge of the area.
Although both sides passed up a number of good opportunities in an entertaining encounter, it was well-earned triumph for Neil Lennon’s men who enjoyed a greater share of possession and created the more clear-cut chances.
Predictably, with attaining optimum condition the main goal of the exercise, the Hoops boss had made several changes to the team which defeated Perth Glory so convincingly last weekend. The likes of Daniel Majstorovic, Georgios Samaras, Ki and Paddy McCourt all came into the starting XI.
Despite the alterations, the Hoops began with great gusto in front of the over 20,000 fans who had turned up on a rainy evening in the Victorian capital.
A wonderful long pass from Kelvin Wilson sent Commons racing clear but Melbourne keeper, Tando Velahpi, rushed out quickly to block his shot. It would be a busy evening for the shot-stopper.
Adam Matthews, who had came in for Mark Wilson at right-back, then made a foraging run down the right and was felled at the edge of the area. Commons took the free-kick but it failed to bypass the defensive wall.
Celtic were playing some nice stuff, zipping the ball around the greasy surface with gusto. But the hosts showed they were also capable of constructing good passages of play, with Tomislav Pondeljak ending a slick passing move by firing wildly over.
With both sides intent on forward enterprise, the match was now flowing from end-to-end.
It was then Celtic’s turn to attack. Beram Kayal shot over before Kelvin Wilson headed narrowly wide from Ki’s corner. And, after evading the offside trap, Gary Hooper turned inside his marker, bringing out a good stop from Velaphi.
Lukasz Zaluska then produced a smart stop from Daniel Allsopp at the other end but Celtic swiftly responded through Samaras, the striker sidefooting an effort too close to Velaphi after good work from McCourt.
Commons rifled a stinging drive straight at the Melbourne keeper from the angle of the box and then Ki shot over twice as Celtic mounted the pressure toward the interval.
Samaras, captain for the evening in tribute to Melbourne’s large Greek community, saw another powerful shot saved, after controlling Commons’ cross.
Celtic continued where they had left-off after the restart and Mulgrew saw a venomous free-kick pushed over by Velaphi.
Samaras then slipped in McCourt on the left, the winger dancing past one defender before his low shot from an angle was turned away by the Melbourne minder.
That seemed to spark the hosts into action again. The profligate Alssop passed up two decent chances, including a near-post header which he should have converted.
He did better, shortly after, sending Socceroo striker Archie Thompson scampering on to a perfectly-weighted through pass but he dragged his shot out for a throw-in.
Celtic replied with Commons picking out McCourt at the far post with a glorious delivery. However, the Irishman was unable to keep his header down.
And as the game entered its closing stages, it was Lennon’s men who had all the attacking momentum. Hooper’s low cross was almost turned into his own net by Adrian Leijer, before Anthony Stokes struck a low shot into the side-netting.
A determined burst into the box by Samaras saw the Greek hitman slide an inviting ball across but somehow Hooper was unable to reach. Had he connected, a goal would have been a certain outcome.
Finally, Celtic’s endeavours were rewarded. Commons took a quick corner and found Brown lurking at the edge of the area. His shot took a slight deflection, before nestling into the corner of the net, sending the huge Hoops support behind the goal into raptures.
Stokes had still time to hit the bar from a free-kick, while Daryl Murphy also came close on two occasions. Yet Brown’s goal was enough to end a successful tour of Oz on a high, and send the Hoops into the SPL campaign with plenty of confidence.
CELTIC (4-4-2) Zaluska; Matthews (Cha 79), Majstorovic, K. Wilson (Ledley 73), Mulgrew; Commons, Kayal (Brown 58) Ki, McCourt (Stokes 66), Hooper (Murphy 79) Samaras
Not Used: Cervi, Towell
Emilio set for Firhill return on Saturday By: Laura Brannan on 15 Jul, 2011
DANNY McGrain will take his Celtic XI to Firhill on Saturday, July 16, for the Hoops’ first pre-season friendly on Scottish soil.
The Development Squad will go head-to-head with former Celtic captain Jackie McNamara’s Partick Thistle at 3pm and will provide the Bhoys with a worthy run-out.
With the first-team squad not touching down from their tour of Australia until late on Friday night, McGrain explained what line-up the fans should expect at the weekend.
“A very young team,” he exclusively told the official website. “The first-team have been away so the majority of the team will be youth players who are stepping into the Development Squad this season.
“Jos Hooiveld, Josh Thompson and Morten Rasmussen will be included after being away on-loan last season while Emilio Izaguirre will also get a half so we can see if he is over his injuries. Hopefully he comes through it with flying colours.”
The players have been training at Lennoxtown for the last three weeks while the senior squad took on the Australian sides Down Under.
It has been a demanding month as they battled their way back to full fitness, but McGrain has been pleased with their commitment.
He added: “Everyone has been training well because they know themselves they need to be fit for if and when the manager calls on them, or if they go out on-loan to another club. They have been training excellently.
“Stevie Frail’s been here too, so that has helped the younger boys because he was their manager last season and they feel confident with him being around.”
Partick Thistle have already played a handful of friendlies this month and McGrain knows their match fitness will be a lot sharper than his Hoops side.
But with the home team also consisting of a large youth contingency, he is expecting a well contested match.
“Thistle have had a few pre-season games already while we haven’t had any so obviously we’re going to be a bit short of match fitness - but that’s what these games are for. We want to test our fitness and continue improving it.
“We were thinking of maybe having a game last week but the younger lads have only been back for two weeks.
“They’ve been working very hard but there are other players in the squad that came back last month, the likes of Lewis Toshney and Greig Spence.
“Some of the younger boys, like John Herron and Callum McGregor only came back recently so it was probably a little bit too early for them.”
The two rival dugouts will provide an interesting battle of the Celtic legends, with McGrain taking on McNamara, and new Thistle assistant manager, Simon Donnelly.
But while he has great respect for the former defender, he hopes he can put his rise to management glory on hold this weekend.
“Jackie was a great player here and a nice person,” he said. “His Dad was a nice person too so obviously those genes have been passed down.
“He couldn’t not take the job, it’s challenging with the lack of money available to him, but he’ll have a good go at it and I wish him all the best.”
Glasgow Celtic nanager, Neil Lennon will join Miriam this Saturday for his first major TV interview on Irish TV.
Saturday Night with Miriam - 9.30pm on RTÉ One
Lennon is bringing the Celtic first team to Ireland on July 30 and 31 to take part in the inaugural Dublin Super Cup tournament which will also feature Inter Milan and Manchester City first teams.
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