Martin O'Neill's trophy-strewn reign as Celtic manager in the first five years of the millennium was full of banter and bust-ups.
But the bond forged by the Northern Irishman and his team lasted a lot longer than that and remains as strong now as it was when O’Neill led them to the UEFA Cup Final in Seville. The 20th anniversary of that agonising defeat to Porto will be marked next May and the passing of time hasn’t diminished the hurt felt by the players who came so close.
And yet when Stan Petrov looks back on his time with O’Neill, it isn’t the football that prompts the strongest emotions. It’s the humanity of the man who helped him through the darkest hours of his life seven years after they parted company in Glasgow. In 2012 the Bulgarian was captaining Aston Villa, O’Neill managing Sunderland, when Petrov got the earth-shattering news he had acute leukaemia.
