We won’t see the like of Billy McNeill again

Certain deaths unavoidably feel like the closing of an era, the final confirmation that what has been and gone can never return. One such is the passing of Billy McNeill, whose death, at the age of 79, was announced this morning. The Celtic captain, skipper of not just that club’s greatest side but of the finest team that ever emerged from Scotland; the only Scottish team to win the european cup and the first British side to do so, was one of a kind.

All football clubs cherish their heritage but few more devoutly than Celtic. If the club’s penchant for underdog status sits oddly with its remarkable record of achievement – Celtic will soon win the Scottish championship for a fiftieth time – it still reflects something real. This has not just been a football club, it has been a family. A movement for Catholic Scots and Scots of Irish descent that for generations has understood itself as the outsiders, forever considered somehow suspect or not quite the thing by a Scottish establishment whose colours, especially in Glasgow, were the royal blue of Rangers, not the green and white of Celtic.