Everything Celtic U18s captain Kyle Ure had to say after his side's 6-5 win in the Glasgow Cup final against Rangers.
You are now a Scottish Youth Cup-winning Celtic captain. How does that feel?
It was frantic, wasn’t it? We said at half-time that we need to be tighter defensively. We conceded too many goals that we are going to look back on and make sure it doesn’t happen again. But our attacking play – I thought we were very good. Scoring as many goals as we did, it’s been paying off. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve scored as much as we want. We’ve worked on it in training to try and get a better end product. This shows it’s paying off. We just need to tidy up on the defensive side of things and we can become even better.
Have you been involved in many 6-5 matches in your career?
I don’t think so. Maybe at U14s But not in recent times. It was a bizarre game of football. I can’t see that happening anytime again soon.
What about Ange Postecoglou being here?
It’s great. Just lifting a trophy in front of anybody is amazing but to do it at the national stadium in front of your first team manager and against your biggest rivals is something that every single player involved will remember for the rest of their lives.
What about the message from Ange and Callum McGregor - how was that received?
It motivated us. Both the club captain and the first team manager going out of their way to say "good luck" gave us motivation. If you needed any extra motivation that topped it off.
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Are you aware that this is how Calmac started his Celtic career by winning the SFA Youth Cup?
Hopefully I’m the same and this can continue. He’s a great role model. He plays the same position as me. I can look at his game and try to take bits from it and add them to mine. The way he conducts himself on and off the pitch is remarkable and he’s a great role model for me. He’s someone I aspire to, the club captain and a perfect example of what it takes to become a professional football player and the captain of Celtic. He wished us good luck and told us to stay calm and play our game which we tried to do and stick to the style. I thought attacking-wise we did. The way our rotations work and the way we play but defensively, the whole team needs to get better. With those wee changes, it would be the perfect performance. The manager just said the same – good luck, stay composed, nothing changes. At the end of the day, it’s a game of football. If we play our own game, we know that we can beat anybody on our day, but our performance needs to come, and I thought tonight, in an attacking sense, we showed that.
When you see the likes of Rocco Vata and Ben Summers being promoted to the full squad, does that spur you on to do the same?
We see there’s a pathway there. You can see that if you are good enough the manager will put you in. Our aim is to get up to the B team and then from the B team to the first team. It’s always just a process that keeps providing good opportunities for players. It’s games that as players you’d love to play in. We just need to take it step by step and hopefully get to the first team one day and become like Callum McGregor and James Forrest - players who have come through the academy and have established themselves in the first team and become Celtic legends.
It's a pity there were no fans to see it, would you have loved to have won the cup in front of a big crowd?
It would have been good. If there had been fans in it would have been a different experience and more of an atmosphere. It would have been good for us, but it was still good – playing in front of a decent number of fans from the academy. Hopefully we inspired them to go on the same journey that we are all on and hopefully make it into the first-team one day.
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