Martin O’Neill has paid tribute to John Keane after the Celtic director’s sad passing just last month.
John was a pivotal figure in saving Celtic back in the 1990s when the club fell into financial difficulties. When the bank was demanding £1m to stop the club from going into administration, John put up the money and saved the club.
An influential figure in helping Fergus McCann take over the club, Keane was a lifelong Celtic supporter and served the club as a non-executive director for over 20 years.
Speaking about his time at Celtic, O’Neill paid tribute to John and said he was ‘terrific’ in helping to look after him and his family when he took the Parkhead hot seat in 2000.
O’Neill: John Keane was ‘a terrific man’ with ‘great heart’
We discussed a couple of days ago how O’Neill attended a UEFA event in Belfast with former Celtic striker, Tommy Johnson.
The former Celtic manager was speaking to Clive Tyldesley about that when he revealed that he then took a trip to Scotland to attend the funeral of his friend.
O’Neill said [The Football Authorities], “I went over to Edinburgh because I went to a funeral of a very, very, very good man, John Keane, who’s the director at Celtic.
“He and Kathleen, his wife, looked after my family brilliantly when we came up to Scotland, first of all, way back in the year 2000.
“And honestly, terrific man, great heart, did brilliantly for Celtic as well to help to finance them as well too at the time of real difficulty.
“And he died so I went to his funeral. So that was the sad loss, a sad loss to Celtic.”
John Keane will always be held in high regard by the Celtic support and his work in the nineties has allowed the fans to enjoy the success that the current team enjoys to this day.
We would like pass on our sincere condolences to the friends and family of this great Celtic man.