Official biography of celtic

Celtic Football Club was formed 120 years ago in the east end of Glasgow.

Club expert and historian, Graham McColl, has chronicled The Official Biography: If You Know The History, a comprehensive overview.

So much has been written over the decades on Celtic, a Scottish institution, and McColl, who has written a number of previous books on the club, gets to the heart of the matter, with a work rich in scope and substance.

Celtic's founder, Marist brother Walfrid, visualised that a football team could help alleviate poverty in the local area.

And, in particular, the chapters on Celtic's formative years make for illuminating reading. For instance, the author manages to unearth a rare document, dated January 1888.

In it, there is an appeal for funding: "We can select a team which will be able to do credit to the Catholics of the West of Scotland as the Hibernians (Hibernian FC) have been doing in the East."

Such is the diligence and attention to detail that will surely appeal to the club's legion of fans.

Legends are well-documented. Willie Maley, the clubs' first manager, is revealed to have more in common with his Rangers' counterpart, Bill Struth, than first imagined, both men holding an interest in athletics.

On the playing side, Jimmy Quinn and Jimmy McGrory, prolific goalscorers of the 1920s and 1930s, plus sixties wing king Jimmy Johnstone as well as recent fans' favourite, Henrik Larsson, are all intriguingly viewed through the lens of Celtic's traditional emphasis on attacking football.

However, in something of a coup, McColl obtains exclusive interviews with manager Gordon Strachan and Dermot Desmond, the Dublin-based major shareholder.

Desmond, interestingly, while mindful of Celtic's heritage, makes some salient points about the direction, ideally, he wishes the club to go.

The Irishman also claims, that Celtic, with it's background in the Irish Catholic immigrant community, still remains the team of the "underclass", although the club jettisoned it's charitable status just a few years after foundation to be run on more businesslike lines.

Indeed, McColl examines the club's role in contemporary Scottish society, and thoughtfully tackles the ongoing debate of sectarianism.

That said, the modern Celtic, as the author notes, is a much different establishment in the 21st century, with an annual turnover of more than £75m, more than half of which is earned from non-matchday income.

As expected, all the major landmarks are assessed; the Lisbon Lion's elevation to European Cup winners; Jock Stein's nine league titles in a row between 1965-1974; the dark days overshadowed by the threat of bankruptcy in the early nineties; the rollercoaster ride to the Uefa Cup final under Martin O'Neill in 2003.

Celtic Football Club have come a long way since their inaugural match against Rangers, the team from the other side of Glasgow who were to become great rivals, on 28 May 1888.

The Celtic strip back then, curiously, was a white shirt with a green collar, unlike the Hoops now so readily identifiable in the world of football.

Some things may have changed in the Glasgow side's event-filled existence.

But the passion and belief which both forged the club's entry into Scottish football, and the supporters who have sustained it in good times and bad, remains as strong as ever.

McColl, again, convinces in his search for both the history and the soul of Celtic.

The Official Biography of Celtic: If You Know The History by Graham McColl is out now, published by Headline.