Aiden McGeady (born April 4, 1986 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a professional football player for Celtic and represents the Republic of Ireland in international football.
Junior career
Aiden McGeady was tipped as a future football star since he was selected for the Under 11 Glasgow Catholic Football School select team at the age of nine. [citation needed] He was educated at primary level at Our Lady of the Missions Primary school and at secondary level at the nearby St Ninian’s Secondary School, on the south side of Glasgow. For a short spell in his young teens, McGeady played for amateur club Queen’s Park F.C., before the club allowed him to move to the team he supported, Celtic F.C..
McGeady went onto captain Glasgow Catholic Schools, and played alongside now Celtic teammate Mark Wilson. McGeady was tracked by many top teams in England and Scotland, with both Alex Ferguson and Liam Brady making personal pleas for the youngster to join Manchester United and Arsenal respectively. [citation needed] He has been described as the most coveted schoolboy footballer in the UK. He signed a lucrative boot deal with Adidas at the age of only sixteen.
Club career
McGeady made his senior debut for Celtic in 2004 during a Scottish Premier League match against Hearts, in which he scored.
Since then McGeady’s career at Celtic has been quite frustrating. The youngster has proved his undoubted ability with Man of the Match performances against Rangers and AC Milan. Despite his natural talent though McGeady has struggled to become a Celtic regular partly due to managers favouring more experienced players, inconsistent form and lately, injury. McGeady has worn the same squad number at Celtic since his début: 46. As of the start of the 2006/2007 season he appears to have obtained a regular starting position in Celtic’s first eleven.
Awards
Since making his début, aged 18, McGeady has picked up the following awards:
December 2004 – SPL Player of the Month
Season 2004/05 – Celtic Young Player of the Year
November 2005 – SPL Young Player of the Month
Season 2005/06 – Celtic Young Player of the Year
August 2006 – SPL Young Player of the Month
September 2006 – SPL Young Player of the Month
National team
As a young player, he represented the Scottish national team, up to Under-15s level. He played for the Scottish Schoolboys national team before he joined Celtic. At that time SFA policy was that in order to represent Scotland Schoolboys, the player in question must be registered with a Schoolboys team. This was incompatible with the policy at Celtic, which does not allow such arrangements. Instead, Packie Bonner, who knew of his Irish lineage (McGeady’s paternal grandfather was Irish), invited him to play for the Irish schoolboys team, (who, unlike the SFA, do not insist on schoolboys actually playing for their school team). Since then he has played for the Irish Under-15s, Under-16s, Under-17s, Under-19s, Under-21s, and, in 2004, made his full international début, against Jamaica in an end-of-season friendly.
His decision to opt for the Republic of Ireland instead of his country of birth, has been the subject of some controversy in Scotland, and left many Scots disappointed with the player’s choice of national team. McGeady himself explains it as loyalty to the team that picked him as an unknown youngster.