He’s just not getting his game. One of those players who had a dramatic fall off in form once he got a little bit older and it was a huge area of discontent in MO’N’s last season that he persevered with Thompson even though his legs were clearly gone. In fairness to him he still plays reserves and the odd league cup game without complaining - though he’s probably on decent money.
Good article about McGeady in The Times yesterday. He mentions ambitions of playing abroad/in England though.
ABOUT A BOY
Paul Rowan, Irish football correspondent
Aiden McGeady had to make tough decisions at an early age but is now blossoming into an outstanding prospect for Celtic and Ireland
A letter sent by the Scottish Football Association, dated September 2, 2002:
Quote:
Dear Mr and Mrs McGeady,
I would like to thank you for your courtesy and honesty during the various calls and the meeting with Bert at Hampden. I know it must not have been an easy few weeks for the McGeady family as Aiden made his decision about his international future. As a parent myself I can sympathise because our role is to guide and offer advice and once our children have made their decision, to support. Nobody can give us that training to cope with the stress of it all. Aiden is a very mature and intelligent young man and is a credit to both of you. Bertie and I are so disappointed that he has chosen the Republic over Scotland, but we respect his decision and wish Aiden every success in his career. Scotlands loss is the Republics gain.
Ross Mathie, International youth team manager
A small piece of Irish footballing history contained in one of the scrapbooks compiled by John McGeady, an English teacher by profession but also a skilled archivist, as a visit to his home last Thursday evening in rain-lashed south Glasgow made clear.
An increasingly rare breed in an industry enveloped by suspicion and secrecy, McGeady was happy to sit back in his living room and open both his scrapbooks and his soul on the achievements of his son, Aiden. Later his 20-year-old son will have his say, but for the time being he has secreted himself elsewhere in the McGeady household, driven out of the room by an innate sense of modesty and reserve.
Aidens quite introverted, his father says. It frustrates me at times, because I say to him what little glory I had I loved it. He doesnt. I think he finds it quite difficult speaking to people. Hes quite quiet and shy, although in the company of people he knows, hes not, hes absolutely hilarious. Great sense of humour, very funny, very quick-witted.
The family have just enjoyed such a day, celebrating together the graduation of Aidens mother, Elaine, who has achieved a diploma in nursing. Those pictures belong in a different scrapbook. Before our eyes, McGeady senior unfolds the early years of a player who could go on to be one of Irelands outstanding footballers. Theres the team photo of Govanhill Cubs, with Aiden standing alongside his cousin who was reared in that tough district of Glasgow and in the front row the smiling figure of a young footballer as brilliant as Aiden, but now serving a life sentence for murder. Another is of Aiden in a green strip during a trip to his grandmothers village in Gweedore in Donegal, where as a 12-year-old boy he had entertained the locals doing keepy uppies with tennis and golf balls. And then there is Aiden in a comically large Arsenal shirt in the company of Liam Brady, during a trip down to the Arsenal training ground when he was 11 or 12.
This is when Arsenal wanted to sign him, John says. Liam Brady used to fly us down every five or six weeks and Aiden used to play for the Arsenal youth team. They treated us very, very well but I made it clear right from the start that Aiden was never going to England at the age of 16. Brady couldnt believe it when we turned him down. He said, Well change your mind. I said, No you wont. Aidens not going to England.Thats it. No matter what financial carrot was dangled in front of him, he wasnt leaving.
I wouldnt let Aiden go down to every Premiership club that wanted to have him down because I witnessed a number of incidents down there that I didnt find particularly attractive. Quite a few parents were sending their sons down to clubs and picking up little presents and being sort of looked after for the weekend. Being wined and dined. That was never my bag and I never wanted to be involved.
McGeady might appear hands on, pushy even, another case of a father trying to live his life through the achievements of his famous son. Not so, he insists. As a former professional footballer himself he made around 35 first-team appearances during an injury-scarred five years at Sheffield United in the 1970s he knows enough about the pitfalls of the job to make a point of steering his son in the right direction.
I didnt want him to be a football player just because I was. I wanted him to explore other avenues, give his best shot at school, which he did. He was a straight As student. Theres an awful lot of dads who will their sons on to be football players without having really played the game themselves. And I knew the pitfalls of the game and the lonely moments you have when you have a bad game and you go back to a strangers house and you sit back and ruminate on what you did that day and there is nobody there to support you. Basically, I wanted Aiden to make the best of what he has, but if Aiden turned around and said, I dont want to play football any more, Dad, Id be fine with that.
While McGeadys scrapbook is bulging, there is no picture of Aiden with a football as a very young boy. I wasnt interested until I was eight or nine, Aiden explains. My friend was going to train with a local team and I joined him. As soon as I started kicking a ball I liked it, but it was a late start.
His father was having kidney treatment in hospital at the time and returned to be told by his wife that Aiden was out playing with the Busby Boys. I decided I better go down to have a look. I was trying to see through some slats in the fence and all I could see was this blond kid beating people and scoring goals. I thought that Aiden wouldnt have a hope in that company. Then I realised that the kid was Aiden. From that moment on, I knew that life was about to get more complicated.
Despite his fathers reservations, as well as his experiences with Arsenal, McGeady also went south for trials at Manchester City, Blackburn and Manchester United, with Celtic always in the background.
Celtic didnt have a proper youth development system in place at the time. It was pretty much that you signed for Celtic Boys Club, which had a tenuous link with Celtic Football Club. The boys were playing on clay pitches on a Sunday afternoon, against some local boys, beating them 10 or 12 nil and being given absolute dogs abuse by parents because they were wearing Celtic jerseys. They didnt have any sort of development plan in practice, there was no professional coaching. So that was when we decided to have a look at what English clubs had to offer as far as facilities were concerned and how they looked after and nurtured the youngsters. It was a learning experience for myself and for Aiden in particular and all of a sudden Celtic clicked. They started a youth development system which pretty much brought it up to scratch with English clubs.
Celtic took Aiden on their books when he was 14, training three nights a week and playing at weekends while he continued to attend school. Like several top Premiership clubs, Celtic insisted that their trainees didnt play schools football and the seeds of McGeadys involvement with Ireland were then sown. The Scottish Schools FA insisted that players representing their under-age sides play schools football and McGeady fell through the net as a result.
When I was 15 I wanted to play for Scotland but I couldnt, McGeady says. Then Packie Bonner phoned and asked me to go over training with Ireland and I thought, Whats the harm in that? I did quite well and got asked back and got to know the system really well and the boys. When I broke into the first team at Celtic there was all the drama about why I had picked Ireland rather than Scotland, but I already knew the set-up and wasnt going to change my mind. This despite the fact that Scotland once named him in a squad for an under-17s match against Northern Ireland and Berti Vogts, then the Scotland manager, invited Aiden and his father into a meeting at his office in Hampden Park.
I felt we should attend out of courtesy, John says. He said, Play for Scotland, stay at home, dont play for a foreign nation, which I found somewhat ironic coming from a German in charge of the Scottish international team. Dont get me wrong, he was a nice guy, but Aiden was always going to play for Ireland.
Others in Scotland werent quite so nice about it. While the Celtic captain Neil Lennon has received far worse abuse, McGeady has been routinely booed at several away grounds since he made his Celtic debut. And sections of the Scottish media refuse to let the issue lie.
I made my Ireland debut when I was 18 and now Im 20, but its still brought up. Obviously its annoying when you get booed every time you touch the ball, but its not anything I cant handle. Its just part and parcel of football. I suppose everybodys got their own opinion and a lot of Scottish supporters think Im wrong playing for Ireland, but it doesnt really matter what they think, to be honest with you.
McGeady remembers being interviewed by Stuart Lovell of Setanta Sports after he was made man of the match when Celtic beat Falkirk at the beginning of October.
He said something like, Youll be going away with Ireland next week. You must be looking forward to that. Any regrets playing for Ireland now that Scotland are doing so well? Any time Ireland start doing badly and Scotland start doing well, it comes up again.
Its funny how it works that way. There was this guy who played for Motherwell last year, Brian McLean. He signed from Rangers and he declared for Northern Ireland and played a few games for them. His grandparents were from Northern Ireland, or so they thought. He doesnt get the same stick that I get. And it turns out his grandparents arent from Northern Ireland and he doesnt play for them any more.
McLean, of course, has nothing like the talent McGeady has. Adidas recognised McGeadys special qualities when he was 13, when they signed him up for a boot deal. As well as Brady, Sir Alex Ferguson also made a personal bid to take him down south. Nor did McGeady ever doubt his own abilities. His father has described him as petulant in his first professional season at Celtic at the age of 16 and McGeady accepts the criticism.
I was saying to myself, I am going to play in the first team this season, but I wasnt ready. The coaches were saying to me, You just have to be patient, patient. And I was like, I dont want to be patient. When you look at guys like Wayne Rooney, theyre not patient, are they? It happened without me realising it really. I was patient and eventually I got in the first team.
Three weeks after his 18th birthday, he scored on his debut for Celtic against Hearts and was voted man of the match. Nine months later he was clapped off the pitch by Alessandro Nesta of AC Milan after a Champions League game and he has proved his appetite for big games by being consistently excellent in Old Firm matches. It would appear, however, that he has yet to convince Gordon Strachan that he has the consistency to guarantee a regular first-team slot. He made a brilliant start to this season, but had a poor game when Celtic travelled to Old Trafford in the Champions League in September and found himself as an unused substitute when Manchester United came to Celtic Park on Tuesday for the return leg.
I was very disappointed. All the lads were celebrating in the dressing room afterwards, but I found it difficult. It wasnt that I didnt feel part of it because I played in most of the qualifying games. You want to play in the big games and they dont come much bigger than that. It put us through in the Champions League for the first time in our history. I was happy, but it was just frustrating.
Injuries have intervened at crucial times in his quest for a regular first team place. Last season he was out for 10 weeks with a ligament injury and could only force his way back in when Celtic won the title in early April against Hearts. While on Ireland duty in October, he went over on his ankle, missing three games, and has only featured intermittently in the Premierleague since.
Its just frustrating that Ive not got back because I think I was playing the best football of my career. I played in every single game until I got injured and then I was out of the team. Ive not really featured much at all. Five minutes here and there. I know what Ive got to do to get back in. Keep working hard. The old clich, really. Get my head down.
Well, not all the time. McGeady will be closely watching how Shaun Maloneys contract dispute with Celtic unravels over the next couple of months. Although McGeady can play on the right wing or in the hole his favourite position he has been pitted against Maloney over the left-midfield slot. Maloney, whose contract is up in the summer, will be free to talk to other clubs come January, while McGeadys own contract situation is also coming under the spotlight. His has 18 months left to run and Celtic are believed to have made an initial offer to extend it, but McGeadys progress under Strachan will have a huge bearing on whether the player will be seen at Celtic Park in his prime.
Martin Jol at Tottenham has publicly expressed his interest in the player, while McGeady, perhaps inevitably, has also been linked with re-joining Martin ONeill at Aston Villa. If Strachan doesnt consider McGeady to be his type of player, he would be wise to ship him on in the January transfer window, when Celtic could command a fee in the region of 5m. The player himself would clearly like to test his talents in the Premiership. Eventually that is something that I would like to do, McGeady says. Every player has got aspirations to play in other leagues and do other things with their career, but Im happy at Celtic just now.
Should push come to shove, he is ready to fly the nest. And this time his father wont stop him.