Soccer Football - Scottish Premiership - Celtic v Motherwell - Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - May 14, 2022 Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou celebrate winning the Scottish Premiership with the trophy and his staff Action Images via Reuters/Molly Darlington
Out of almost nowhere Celtic are reported to be on the verge of appointing a Director of Football.
From the moment in February 2021 when Peter Lawwell announced that he was stepping down it seemed that the new executive map would include a Director of Football to work between the boardroom and the management team/football department.
Dominic Harkin of Manchester City was strongly tipped for the job but the messy search for Neil Lennon’s successor highlighted that the priority was to bring in a manager, when that path led to Ange Postecoglou it resulted in an all powerful manager prepared to head up recruitment as well as managing the first team.
With the football side largely in place, shaped entirely by the manager The Sun is reporting that Steve Hitchen (45) is about to take up a key role at Celtic.
STEVE HITCHEN is close to ending his football exile with a move to Celtic.
The transfer guru has been out of the game since leaving Tottenham Hotspur, but is now clear to take up a new post.
The experienced director of football and scout watched Celtic last week and could work in an advisory role with coach Ange Postecoglou — the pair have mutual friends.
It would also help keep Aussie Postecoglou happy and away from potential suitors.
Hitchen had a short playing career in the professional game and was on the books of Blackburn Rovers, Macclesfield Town and Bangor City.
His last role was as director of technical performance for Tottenham, having re-joined the club in 2017 after initially making his name as a scout there in the 2000s.
On 31 December 2021 Celtic announced the signing of Daizen Maeda, Reo Hatate and Yosuke Ideguchi which was an unprecedented way of dealing with the January transfer window.
Approaching his fourth transfer window the appointment of Hitchen appears to cement Postecoglou’s role at Celtic, batting aside speculation that has linked him with Leicester, Brighton and Wolves so far this season.
In May Celtic made a very low key appointment with Mark Lawwell, Peter’s boy, coming in as Head of First Team Scouting and Recruitment, with Hitchen’s past record it would seem that he will have a senior role to Lawwell Jr.
Everton were reported to be close to appointing Hitchen as their Director of Football in February but it seems that he had to serve a period of notice from Spurs.
Announcing his return to Spurs in 2017, Sky Sports covered his previous roles at Derby County, QPR and Liverpool.
According to the video above, which has a great deal of detail Hitchen left his role as Head of Technical Performance at Spurs expecting to get the Director of Football role at Newcastle or Everton.
I will reserve judgement, I think he will face a bigger challenge at Celtic in the financial side of transfers, the Celtic board is not known to like spending too much on the team, we’ll see.