Celtic could regret selling the Scottish star who has been compared to Moravcik

Sundays don’t come much bigger than this Celtic.

On Tuesday night, the hoops went in search of three more valuables Champions League points when they defeated GNK Dinamo Zagreb in the capital of Croatia, after losing all three previous away games at Maksimir Stadium, winning 2-1 in 1963, 3-0 in 1998 and, most recently, 4-3 almost exactly a decade ago . This time, however, they came from 0-0 to show their effort.

Next Sunday, Brendan Rogers‘ team is a heavy favorite to beat the fierce rivals Rangers in the League Cup final at Hampden, aiming to lift a 20th piece of major silverware, out of a possible 25, since Rodgers first arrived in Glasgow.

Celtic’s success over the decades, including the modern era, has been built on a foundation of home-grown Scottish talent.

captain Callum McGregor has been sensational this season, scoring six goals Premiership already goals, each of which came from outside the box, and made his 486th appearance for the club in Zagreb, en route to became only the 14th man to be featured 500+ times for Hoops.

One player who has already reached that milestone is James Forrest. Last Saturday’s half-time opener against Hibernian was the winger’s 516th appearance for the Bhoise and the 33-year-old is an increasingly rare one-club player.

Left-back Greg Taylor is also an important cog in the Celtic machine, but the Scottish champions don’t always get it right when it comes to attracting the best home-grown talent.

Mixed results for Celtic at home

Throughout their history, Celtic have been able to pick up the best young Scottish talent from other Premier League clubs.

Simply looking at the last decade, after Dundee United’s strong start to the 2014/15 season, the Hoops paid a total of £2.25m for The Tangerines’ two best players, Stuart Armstrong and Gary McKay-Steven, quelled any title talk that had begun to swirl in Tannadice.

Ryan Christie (Inverness Caley Thistle; £500,000), Scott Allan (Hibs; £250,000), Jack Hendry (Dundee; £1.2m), Lewis Morgan (St Mirren; £300,000), Greg Taylor (Kilmarnock; £2m), David Turnbull (Motherwell; 3.25 million pounds), and Luke McCowan (Dundee; £1m) are all further examples of Celtic snapping up Scotland’s best young talent, paying fees their domestic rivals simply can’t turn down, with the latest only arriving at the end of August.

So why do this? Well, there is of course the Bayern Munich aspect of asserting your domestic dominance by undermining your rivals. But, more tangibly, Celtic need both “club trained” and “association trained” players for their UEFA competition team, they are required to have at least eight domestic players, which is why the likes of Scott Bain, Anthony Ralston and Stephen Welsh are still in the squad, despite appearing frequently.

The above list of Scottish players makes for quite a mixed bag, and there is one player on that list who didn’t achieve much at Parkhead but became a star across the pond.

Lewis Morgan’s Post-Celtic Career

Lewis Morgan arrived from St Mirren in July 2018 but had little impact at Celtic, scoring just two goals in 31 appearancesthese come against AIK in a Europa League in the qualifiers in Stockholm and during the group stage win over Rennais Stadium.

When he arrived, Morgan talked about how he prides himself on his ambidexterity, saying that he idolized club legend Lubomir Moravcikbut it’s fair to say that he hasn’t achieved the same cult hero status that the Czechoslovak midfielder did.

Morgan actually spent the second half of his debut campaign on loan at Sunderland, before being sold to MLS expansion club Inter Miami in January 2020 for only 400 thousand pounds.

His two seasons in Fort Lauderdale were chaotic and largely disrupted by Covid-19, scoring just seven goals in 58 appearances for the Herons, but he must have caught the eye of some impressed observers in New Jersey because in January 2023, Morgan joined New York Red Bulls, who paid quite a bit $1.2 million in general allocation money for his services.

The Scot certainly found a home in the Big Apple, scoring 31 goals in 79 matches for RBNI, the so-called. 2024 MLS Player of the Yearan award given to a player “who has shown impressive improvement after overcoming a serious injury … or following a previous career slump.”

Morgan was a key figure as New York reached the MLS Cup for just the second time in franchise history, their only previous appearance coming in 2008 when they narrowly beat the LA Galaxy 2-1 at Dignity Health Sports Park on Saturday.

Interestingly, the former Celtic winger has been one of the best performing strikers in all of Major League Soccer.

To accomplish this for a generally mediocre Red Bulls team that finished seventh in the Eastern Conference, becomes the lowest seeded team to ever reach the MLS Cupnot bad for a player who showed very little of his full potential during his short time at Celtic.

Morgan even went back to Steve Clark Scotland plans this year, including in the team for the European Championship 2024, to earn his first games in six years, also from the bench during three UEFA Nations League A matches in the fall. Perhaps the Hoops may regret letting him go all those years ago?