When Aston Villa host Celtic in the Champions League on Wednesday, watching from the Villa Park television studio will be an observer with a fully informed perspective.

Martin O’Neill is one of only two men – alongside Billy McNeill – to have managed both clubs. And though they have never before met in a competitive match there is one thing he discovered, soon after taking charge at both, they have in common: continental history. Albeit in a time that now seems projected entirely in sepia, both have won Europe’s foremost club trophy.

“Oh, that history is vital,” says O’Neill. “I don’t think you should downplay that past. At both clubs I absolutely wanted to embrace it. They had won the European Cup, the one trophy every player worth their salt should chase. I wanted the players to remember the past, be inspired by it, not be intimidated by it.”

And, when it comes to a past in the European Cup, O’Neill knows what he is talking about. After all, he has a bit of history in the competition himself, having won it twice as a player at Nottingham Forest. Not that, as a manager, he was keen to flaunt his own record.

“I don’t think when I was at either club I ever mentioned what it was like winning it,” he says. “Or at least I tried not to mention it. Chris [Sutton, who played for him at Celtic] might disagree. OK, OK, thinking about it, there was one boastful moment when I may have talked about it in a pre-match meal. But I never believed it was something that would gee the players up. I think they’d just roll their eyes if I went on about what I once did.”

Nevertheless, he wanted to learn from others who had won it. One of the first things he did when he arrived at Celtic Park from Leicester City in the summer of 2000 was to organise a meal with some of the Lisbon Lions, the Celtic winners in 1967. Ever curious, ever eager to pick up tips, he was keen to tap into their knowledge.

“When I arrived I felt that the ’67 side had been a little lost,” he recalls. “Not from supporters, they rightly still lauded them. But around the club, they’d seemed a bit detached. I felt it right to bring them back into the limelight a touch. So I took the ’67 team out for a bite of dinner within six weeks of going up there. Jimmy Johnstone, Tommy Gemmell – sadly, these are heroes who have now passed on. I’m so glad I had time with them.”

Whatever it was he gleaned that night over dinner was more than effective. Employed to wrest control from the then-dominant Rangers, he won the domestic Treble in his first season in charge. Though it was the title win that really mattered: it put the club back in the competition that once defined them.

‘It would have been great to have nailed the Uefa Cup’

“Without doubt Celtic had to be in the Champions League,” he says. “And we did OK that year. We got nine points in the group but didn’t qualify. In the final group game, we lost out to a last-minute goal at Juventus. It was a very dubious decision, the sort of thing VAR would have overruled. Actually, you didn’t need VAR to know that should never have been allowed.”

The following season, though, he properly addressed his and his employer’s European itch by steering the club to what was their third (and last) European final: the 2003 Uefa Cup. Half of Glasgow emptied as thousands journeyed to Seville to see O’Neill’s side take on José Mourinho’s Porto.

“We’d done really well to reach the final, knocking Liverpool out on the way,” he recalls. “And while José might have been a bit of an unknown then, he had a lot of good players, most of them won the Champions League the next season. We got beaten 3-2 in extra time, but we could have won that game. It would have been great for us to have nailed that trophy. Would have been terrific. But there you go.”

O’Neill was not able to develop things from that success: he resigned in 2005 to care for his wife Geraldine, who had been diagnosed with leukaemia. In 2006, with his wife’s cancer in remission, he arrived at Aston Villa. And he found, just as he had at Celtic Park, that the club’s European Cup glory in 1982 was not being celebrated as it might.

“There didn’t seem to be pictures of the winning team round the place,” he says. “I made sure some went up as soon as I got there.”

‘The gap has definitely widened’

When Ange Postecoglou moved from success at Celtic to Tottenham Hotspur in 2023, he did not sign any of his old players. One of the first buys O’Neill made on arriving in Birmingham was Stiliyan Petrov from his old club. That, he suggests, is a reflection of the ever-widening disparity between the Premier League and its tartan rival.

“There wasn’t that big a gap in quality when I moved to Villa,” O’Neill says. “The side I had at Celtic, we had Paul Lambert, who’d won the Champions League, Henrik Larsson, I signed Chris Sutton. Without question we were not just doing well in Scotland, we had a good record in Europe.

“I honestly believe at that time, that side would have held its own easily in the top five or six of the Premier League. That would be much more difficult now, the gap has definitely widened. There’s none of the serious money there is in England in Scotland. Celtic do great given the disparity.”

‘Emery has found his niche at Villa’

What he did discover, however, was the level of competition within the league was much greater south of the border. He took Villa to three successive sixth places in the Premier League, before resigning when he felt the club’s then owner Randy Lerner did not share his ambition to restore Villa to where they belonged: in the Champions League. That was an elevation which remained unfulfilled until Unai Emery arrived.

“His attention to detail, his instructions, his European record, it’s terrific what he’s done,” O’Neill says of the current manager. “It’s no real surprise given his past. I know he had a tough old time at Arsenal and at PSG. But here he has found a niche, put his mark down.”

So it is that on Wednesday the two former winners face off. And O’Neill says he cannot wait.

“It’s a different competition than when we played in it, obviously,” he says. “Back in my day, you could only get in as league champions. You spent 42 games becoming that. Then, our first journey into the European Cup with Forest was against Liverpool, the European champions. We could have gone out in the first round, after two games. In our time you could win the European Cup in your ninth game. Now you have to play eight just to get out of the group stage.”

Though, however much the competition has expanded, O’Neill declares himself a fan of the way it is organised these days.

‘New Champions League format suits Celtic’

“I like it better now,” he says. “I think the old format was becoming a little tired, with all the big clubs seeded and you more or less knowing who was going to progress. I think this format suits teams like Celtic. It gives them a real chance of making it into knock-out phase.”

Moreover, he says, it has added a bit of jeopardy to the proceedings on Wednesday, with Villa needing to win in order to ensure they do not have a play-off to add yet more games to a crowded season.

“Because they got that win over Young Boys that qualifies them for the play-off, Celtic can go to Villa with nothing to worry about. Villa having lost to Monaco, well it’s very important for them to stay in the top eight. So there’s going to be plenty to play for. No question I’m going to enjoy this.”

He pauses for a moment. Then chuckles.

“Actually, I’ll love it.”