Callum McGregor on ‘massive honour’ of reaching 500 Celtic appearances

Callum McGregor reflected on the dedication, family support, patience and appreciation that helped him become the latest player to make 500 appearances for Celtic.

The 31-year-old hit the landmark on Sunday as he captained Celtic to a 3-1 victory over Motherwell at Fir Park.

“It’s obviously a massive honour,” the midfielder said. “It’s such a huge football club and to play this many games under such high demand, and performance levels have got to be there, there’s pressure to win and win well, so it’s a lot of hard work and dedication.

“It’s amazing, if you think right back at the beginning, you could only have dreamed that something like this would happen.

“You’re just trying to put one foot in front of the other and help the team as much as you can. It’s been 10-and-a-half years or something and it just feels like it flew by. You lift your head and 500 games later you’re sitting here.

“It’s an amazing achievement and something I’m really proud of, but there’s a lot of people helped me along the way as well, the manager, my family as well, so I have a lot of people to thank.”

McGregor was upstaged by Jota on his milestone match as the Portuguese winger netted in the closing seconds on his return to the team 18 months after leaving for spells in Saudi Arabia and then France.

Jota was overcome with emotion after celebrating in front of the fans, having admitted earlier last week that he only truly appreciated what he had at Celtic after he left.

McGregor has amassed 23 winners’ medals and played regularly in the Champions League and has maintained that appreciation.

“I understand how big this football club is,” he said. “You speak to a lot of players when they leave and they regret it and they realise how big the club is.

“The thing for me is I grew up five, six minutes away from the stadium, so I felt it my whole childhood.

“I knew how big the club was and when I walked through the door at eight, my only thought was to try and make it to play in the first team.

“I touched on my family there, my family just dedicated their whole life to make sure that I had the best chance possible to play for Celtic, which is insane. So when I think back now, there’s so much going into it, that was the be all and end all, was just play in the first team, have a career at Celtic and I’m so, so lucky that I’ve managed to do that.”

McGregor has not quite been a one-club man – he had a successful season on loan at Notts County before making his Celtic debut. But even that move was designed to improve his prospects of playing for the Hoops.

“I wanted to show people that I could play men’s football and come back and play for Celtic,” he said.

“When you’re young, patience is something you don’t have and that’s everybody, and especially now in the modern day world, everything’s on your phone, it’s so readily available.

“So patience is something that probably the young lads don’t have so much of now.

“But this is an amazing football club and it can take time. We see it with guys that come in, young players, they come in, they shoot up, they go down again, they’ve got to find a level of consistency and then they go back up and then they stay in.

“So it does take a bit of time and if you stick it out, it’s an amazing learning experience for you as well.

“Once you get through that wee spell then this is an amazing football club with so much pressure and expectation that you can’t help but love it.”