[1] Willie O'Neill (30 December 1940 – 28 April 2011) was a Scottish footballer who played for Celtic and Carlisle United as a full-back. Willie was a member of the famous 'Lisbon Lions' Celtic team who became the first British club to win the European Cup in 1967.
O'Neill signed for Celtic in 1959, aged 18, and made his debut in the 1961 Scottish Cup Final replay against Dunfermline.[3] Although O'Neill did not play in Celtic's victory in the 1967 European Cup Final, he was an important member of the first team squad, making 32 appearances in the 1966–67 season.[3] Many of those came during the first few months of the campaign (including the 1966 Scottish League Cup Final)[4] as Jim Craig had temporarily dropped out of the team due to his dentistry studies.[3]
At the time of O'Neill's death, Craig remarked that O'Neill was a defensive-minded full-back, who rarely made forays into the opposition's half of the field.[3] This style of play was in keeping with the traditional function of the position, but full-backs were being expected to attack more by the mid-1960s.[3] Indeed, fellow full-back Tommy Gemmell scored the equalising goal in the European Cup Final victory.[5][6]
O'Neill made a total of 86 appearances for Celtic,[7] 55 of those in Scottish Football League matches.[2] He represented the Scottish League once, in 1968.[8] He left Celtic in 1969 for Carlisle United, but was forced to retire just two years later due to an ankle injury.[3]
^Lennox, Bobby (25 May 2007). "The Italians sat back and we hunted them down". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 29 April 2011. Even the best of managers – and Jock Stein clearly came into that category – can only lay out a plan for the players to follow. Once the game starts, the players have to use their initiative. That was what Tommy Gemmell was doing when, after 63 minutes of the final, he streaked upfield to latch on to a pass from Jim Craig. It was taboo, under Jock's instructions, for both full-backs to be attacking in the opposing team's half but Tommy, as a good, thinking footballer, had judged that the Italians were not enough of a goalscoring threat for it to be a problem for him to join the attack. It had always looked to me, throughout the match, as though Bobby or Bertie or Tam would score from the edge of the box and that was exactly what happened, with Tommy smacking a fine 20-yard shot past Sarti's right shoulder for our equaliser.
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