“WHEN it comes to football there is no more political an institution than Celtic Football Club in Glasgow,” writes John Wight in his recently released book: Jungle Days, Supporting Celtic in the 1980s.

Celtic’s identity and location, a club with an Irish identity in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom, and everything that goes with that description, make a good case to render this statement true.

And if this is the most political club, then there could arguably be no more politically charged time for it than the 1980s.

A decade of unity and division, culturally rich while economically poor for many, people latched onto things like football and music as an escape.

The history of Celtic as a rebellious club that fights against racism and fascism, and is inextricably linked to Irish republicanism, as the book explains, puts it near the top of a bunch of clubs around the world that remain distinctive.

The club and its supporters have remained defiant, recently flying Palestine flags when Uefa might not want them to, just as they refused to remove the Irish flag at Celtic Park when asked to do so by the Scottish FA in 1952.

“The club’s fanbase is one of the most politically conscious and active of anywhere in the world on a left-wing, anti-racist and anti-fascist basis.

“In the UK in this respect, it’s joined by the fanbase of Liverpool FC.

“Legendary Reds manager Bill Shankly viewed football through the lens of a socialist enterprise in which the whole was more important than the part, and in which each individual part should be dedicated to the cause of the whole.”

Though political, sentiments like this can be applied to sport and to football. Star players are not stars without the rest of their teammates. The best teams have multiple top players because each of them raises the performance of the other through collective performance.

This was famously evident for Celtic in the 1967 Lisbon Lions team, who are mentioned as part of the club’s history to set the scene of what this club became in the 80s. 

Jimmy Johnstone, part of that team, was one of the best of all time, for whom football “was a game of soul and spirit.”

For the manager of that side, Jock Stein, “the game was about putting the ball in the opposition’s net more than it was them putting it in yours.”

It bemoans the game’s move towards predictable, regimented systems and styles, which is an increasingly prevalent discussion in modern football, as some tactics in the present day have become more about pre-planned, gridiron-like, set-plays.

Coincidentally, Celtic are about to hire a manager in Wilfried Nancy, who is an advocate of player freedom of expression as part of the collective. 

Having watched his teams for several years, his approach came to mind when reading parts of this book, and at risk of making this part of the review look silly in the future if things don’t work out for him, he is potentially a really good fit for Celtic.

Nancy is about giving his players an ethos, almost, from which they carry out team plans but make their own decisions from within that.

One of the Frenchman’s quotes while at Columbus Crew has echoes of the way Shankly or Stein might have spoken about football.

“The vision that I have, when it comes to empowering my players, is a way of life, as a coach, as a player and as a person,” Nancy told Pablo Maurer of The Athletic in April 2023. 

“Because to empower my players and convince them to do what I want them to do, with a lot of creativity, they have to be brave and courageous and they have to be able to put their ego on the side sometimes.”

A lot of the desired approach at the club is about mindset and a culture, before you even get the the sporting side.

And, as a result of Celtic’s political make-up, and its place not just in Scottish football, but in the geopolitical, social and cultural settings that are the backdrop to its founding and existence, a lot of this book isn’t about football.

It’s about the political dynamic of Britain and Ireland in the 1980s, and how we got there. It is also about the culture; from what was on TV at the time and what was top of the charts, to which nightclubs were defining the scenes in various working-class cities.

Alongside all of this are team line-ups, songs, and the records of great Celtic teams and some not-so-great Celtic teams, providing the stitching for this woven narrative that drifts back and forth between various points of the ’80s, as well as looking at the history that got us to these points.

Football was part of both the culture and the politics, and was targeted by the authorities along with the working class who followed the sport. The context of all of that is provided.

It’s no surprise, then, given all it stands for and all it embodies, that Celtic remains an international club. As a world football writer, I’ve encountered Celtic everywhere, whether it’s just on a wall in an Irish pub or, in some places, and especially in parts of the US, where they even have teams inspired by the club.

New York has Lansdowne Yonkers (once known as Lansdowne Bhoys) and Manhattan Celtic. San Francisco has the Glens, who at various points have even had an official partnership with the Glasgow club.

But this is also a very local book with some particular stories recalling ’80s match-going and football adventures. It’s partly an autobiography of a supporter and partly a biography of a club, the two intertwining inseparably as they naturally do. It’s also a book about Irish republicanism, struggle, and solidarity.

“For me, Glasgow Celtic Football Club is Irish in its history, identity, and meaning,” writes Wight in no uncertain terms, before going on to explain his reasoning in subsequent chapters.

As many other clubs lose their political and cultural characteristics in the increasingly indistinguishable world of top-level football as big business, Celtic remains “a political institution that has always stood in solidarity with the oppressed around the world.”

Jungle Days: Supporting Celtic in the 1980s by John Wight, published by Pitch Publishing, is out now.