Former Celtic Scout, John Park, has joined Polish outfit, Legia Warsaw, as “Head of International Recruitment”. Park worked at Celtic Park for 10 years as Head Scout and was the main reason for players such as Victor Wanyama and Virgil Van Djik gracing the Parkhead turf.
Park decided to move on as the then new boss, Brendan Rodgers, decided to bring in his own man, Lee Congerton, to find new talent for the Hoops squad.
John Park had outstanding success at Hibernian where he worked as the Youth Academy Director and he was responsible for bringing through names like current Celtic captain, Scott Brown, Kevin Thomson, Derek Riordan and Steven Whittaker.
Park said of his new role at Legia, “I am delighted to be joining Legia Warsaw and I’m looking forward to the challenges in the upcoming months.
“I’ve had many discussions with the president and the club’s coaching staff and, having spoken to them, it was an easy decision to join.
“I know that the club and all the people working there have high expectations and ambitions. The obvious goal beyond winning the national trophies is to qualify for the group stage of the European competitions and I hope that with my knowledge and previous experience in this field, I will be able to contribute to that.
I had some interesting job offers elsewhere, but after visiting Legia Training Centre in December, meeting the people working there, valuable meetings at the wonderful Legia stadium, I just felt it was the right choice”.
Leiga President Dariusz Mioduski was clearly thrilled to get his man and said: “John Park is a well-known and respected name in the football world, which is primarily based on many years of experience, knowledge and a great passion for football.
“We have supplemented our coaching team with a strong leader.”
With Celtic’s recruitement policy being seriously questioned with their policy of project signings wasting millions in the last few seasons and the tens of millions seemingly squandered on players like Barkas this season, many Celtic fans will be thinking the Parkhead board may have dropped the ball on this one and could have tried to persuade Park to return to the Hoops.