Celtic

Glasgow's East End has always had two identities pulling against each other, Catholic and Protestant, and Celtic exists because of that divide. Brother Walfrid, a Marist brother born Andrew Kerins, founded the club on 6 November 1887 in the hall of St Mary's Church on East Rose Street, in the Calton district, to raise money for the Poor Children's Dinner Table and ease poverty among Irish immigrants in the city. The name was chosen to carry both Irish and Scottish roots at once. The first match, against Rangers, was played at St John's Park in May 1888; four years later the club moved to Celtic Park, opened on 20 August 1892, still known to supporters as Paradise.

That first fixture set the terms for everything after. Old Firm derbies against Rangers carry religious and political weight beyond the result, and few rivalries in world football run as long or as loaded.

Celtic's defining sequence came in the 1966/67 season, when a side made up entirely of players born within 30 miles of Glasgow won the league, both domestic cups, and the European Cup, beating Inter 2-1 in Lisbon on 25 May 1967. That team's captain, Jock Stein, went on to manage the side; the label Lisbon Lions has stuck to the squad ever since. Jimmy McGrory's 550 goals across 16 years remain a British record no one has come close to threatening.

The club nearly didn't survive to build on that history. By 1994 Celtic was close to going under; Fergus McCann bought it for around £9 million, floated it as a public company on the London Stock Exchange, and sold his stake in 1999 once the rebuild was done. Dermot Desmond has held the largest shareholding since, around 35 per cent, with Michael Nicholson running the club as chief executive since 2021.

Domestically the record needs little embellishment: 56 league titles, alongside 43 Scottish Cups and 22 League Cups. What Celtic has not repeated is the European run of 1967 — a losing final to Feyenoord in 1970 and a UEFA Cup final defeat to Porto in 2003 are the closest since.