Celtic's Argentine nearly-men who blazed trail for historic Alexandro Bernabei transfer

Former Hoops assistant head coach Eric Black is a man who knows his history – and he could have altered that particular slice of it had he elected to sign one of six Argentine trialists he personally brought over to Parkhead in 1998.

Black was recruited by then Celtic general manager Jock Brown to head up the club’s youth system. The ex-Aberdeen and Metz forward had extensive contacts in world football after completing his pro licence and pitched the idea of a scouting trip to South America to Brown and CEO Fergus McCann.

They loved it. Black duly went off to Buenos Aires and beyond, taking in almost 20 matches in 10 days before pitching back up in Glasgow in January 1998 with six players and a coach in tow.

Martin Gomez, Pablo dos Reis, Pablo Mondica, Miguel Manzoni, Gaston Piaquadio and Martin Figueroa were joined on their three-week trial by under-21 coach Horacio Capiello. All six played in behind-closed-doors games while training with the reserves.

"In South America, Argentina and Brazil are the top two developers of players – and I had contacts in Argentina,” Black told The Celtic Way. “Jock had brought me in to set up the youth structure and I thought Celtic should at least try and explore it and see if there was a potential market that the club could tap into.

“Fergus and Jock were right up for it. They thought it was a great idea. I travelled to Buenos Aires first of all. I must have travelled for about 10 days and I took in 16 games or something like that. I watched a massive amount of players. I took in professional games, reserve games, youth games – you name it, I watched it. It was a trip that consisted of pure football, football, football.

"I ended up coming back with a list of players who I thought could play in the first-team for Celtic, some who we would need to pay a fair bit of money for and others who were good up-and-coming players. We whittled it down to a final six and we brought them over as well as the coach and see what we could do with them.

READ MORE: Jock Brown on plugging Celtic dressing room leaks, saving a fortune on Larsson, Jansen mistakes and debates with McCann

“They came over for three weeks, trained at Celtic and played games. We housed them and fed them. I went into all sorts of details when I brought them over about re-housing them and everything. I did the whole package.”

None of the players were offered a deal, although Black revealed it was Figueroa who came closest to putting pen to paper.

“Figueroa was the biggest nearly-man of the six,” Black recalls. “He was the one we almost signed – and it was close. We wanted to bring him over on his own. I would have liked for it to have been a couple of Argentine players over – maybe not as many as six because it might have been easier to adjust had it just been two of them.

"We ended up not taking any of the Argentine trialists because in the end I just felt that they were going to make a big enough difference to our system and way of playing. There were also potential costs involved as well.

“I had to weigh all of that up as it was me who had explored all the avenues so I had to make up my mind on them. I just believed that they would not have had a sufficient or big enough. That was the decision that Celtic and myself reached after much deliberation.

“Celtic told me it was entirely my baby but I just couldn't put my hand on my heart and say that, having brought them over, that they would be guaranteed first-team players. I just couldn't convince myself that they were good enough and what we needed and I wasn't sure enough that the money we would need to pay out would give us a return.

“It enhanced our views on such matters though – and it allowed us to be more realistic about what we were looking for. We learned an awful lot from it. It was a fabulous exercise for myself personally – I learned about their system of coaching – but Celtic also at the time. It was a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained."

There was another motive for Black’s trip to Argentina. It was not only about exploring the possibility of new markets but of importing a new type of player that British football wasn’t accustomed to developing for itself: the perfect number 10.

Black recalls that the classic attacking midfield role did not truly exist in the club game on these shores and felt determined to change that if he could. While the January 1998 mission did not produce that player for the Hoops, the search helped the club along a road that culminated in the signing of a certain Lubomir Moravcik in October of the same year.

"At that time Celtic, and myself in particular as a coach, were trying to develop the number 10 role… a forward-thinking player,” he said. “It didn't really exist in British football at that time. That was the big pull for me and it was really forward-thinking midfielders that I was trying to get into Celtic.

"I plagiarised a fair bit of the youth football programmes from France in order to help me get the Celtic youth system up and running. I visited France a few times and I had a few friends who worked in youth systems over there and the document that I produced had bits and pieces from that.

"We were trying really hard to change things and be creative as we weren't producing those number 10 types of players and we wanted to understand why and see if we could implement some kind of system that could help produce more of them. 

“We were looking at how these types of players were developed but the original idea that we sought to exploit and explore was all about bringing something different to Celtic at that time.

"That’s why we brought the coach, Cappiello, over. We were keen to pick his brains to see how these types of players were developed in Argentine football. I wanted to try to learn and understand what they were doing and what we weren't doing. It was educational in that regard.

“We knew the number 10 role was going to become a big thing in football. It was the future. A game-changer in more ways than one.

“Those suspicions were confirmed when I visited Argentina. I watched the way their teams played and I studied the number 10 position and the structure of the teams. I just knew this was going to be the way forward in football. This was how Argentinian football did it and this was the kind of player that they were developing.

Eric Black watches over Celtic training during his time as a coach

“We simply didn't develop number 10s at that time – we had strong number 9s and wingers but not 10s. The 10s could change games in one movement and that fascinated me greatly. British football didn't have many players who could do that back then.

“We couldn't actually find what we were looking for though [in terms of a player]. France and one or two other countries had those kinds of players but they were very expensive.

"The irony in all of this is that Doctor Jo Venglos eventually brought in one of the best players that Celtic has arguably ever had for that number 10-type role –  Lubomir Moravcik. Enough said."

It may have been just short of a quarter-century since but there is still an element of trailblazing by Black and Celtic as the millennium came to a close.

That’s why the 58-year-old is still incredulous at the thought that it took until 2022 for Bernabei to become the first Argentine to properly sign for the Celtic first-team.

He said: "I'm just amazed that Celtic still hadn’t signed an Argentine player, especially when we were exploring and looking at tapping into that potential market almost 25 years ago.

“Celtic would have been viewed as real pioneers if we had managed to pull an Argentine signing off back then. I guess the recruitment process now is a hell of a lot more advanced than it was back then as well though.

“The knowledge of players everywhere in the world is so much better. That's why recruitment teams at football clubs know that potential signings Bernabei are all the more possible.

"Interestingly enough, Bernabei's former side Club Atletico Lanus were one of the teams I watched when I was out there in 1998. That's why I smiled when I heard that Celtic had signed him. The back story, from a Celtic perspective all of those years ago, makes Bernabei's recruitment all the more interesting now."

Back story? Surely it should read Black story, shouldn't it?

One wonders if Argentina ever did produce another world-class number 10 attacking midfielder? Let me think...