Celtic II

Excelsior Stadium sits in Airdrie, and the building itself belongs to Airdrieonians, not to Celtic. It seats 10,101. The arrangement is administrative rather than sentimental: when Scotland did away with its old reserve league, Celtic B needed a competitive home that met Lowland League ground requirements.

The team was formed in 2021. It wears the senior side's green-and-white hooped shirt, white shorts and white socks, so a teenager promoted for a first-team run-out barely notices the change of badge. Tommy McIntyre took the team through its first season before Stephen McManus took over as head coach, a post he still held through 2025/26; for a spell Darren O'Dea worked alongside him as pathway manager before leaving the club in 2025.

League form has stayed modest — third place in the first two Lowland League campaigns, then fifth and fourth in the two that followed — and the side doesn't enter the Scottish Cup at all, reserve teams being barred from that competition, while its best Challenge Cup run stopped at the third round. Owen Moffat top-scored in that opening season with 11 goals, Adam Brooks added 10, and Joey Dawson ran up hat-tricks against part-time opposition. What has mattered more than any of those placings is what came after: Ben Doak moved on to Liverpool, and Karamoko Dembélé and Rocco Vata both passed through the same dressing room on the way to senior football.

On a midweek Lowland League night, though, none of that fills the ground. Excelsior Stadium's seats belong, in the public's mind, to Airdrieonians, and they stay largely empty for the visiting shirt that everyone in Scotland still recognises.