Inside Callum McGregor's Celtic longevity - why no rest required ahead of the Scottish Cup final

He is one of the most relied upon players in Scottish football but you won't catch Callum McGregor asking for a rest.

Celtic have three dead rubber league fixtures to negotiate across seven days, starting at home to St Mirren on Saturday, before attention turns to the Scottish Cup final on June 3 and the chance to secure a historic treble with a victory over Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

The meaningless nature of Celtic's Premiership run-in owing to the premature conclusion of a title race they wrapped up with four games to spare presents manager Ange Postecoglou with an opportunity to rotate his squad ahead of the big end-of-season showdown at Hampden. McGregor would fall into the category of player who may be deemed worthy of a break having made 47 appearances – all of them starts – for club and country either side of a knee injury picked up against RB Leipzig in October which ruled him out for two months. This on the back of a 59-game campaign on multiple fronts last season.

It is a heavy workload for any player – let alone one who provides so much energy and bustle from the middle of the park – but any notion of McGregor suffering from burnout is quickly dismissed by the Celtic captain who confirmed that he has no intention of putting his feet up to prepare for Inverness – unless his manager instructs him to. Again, unlikely, given Postecoglou has not named his skipper on the bench once this term, although he was given the luxury of sitting out the second half of the 5-0 win over Morton in the Scottish Cup having been replaced at half-time, one of only six times he failed to complete the full 90 minutes this season.

Celtic's Callum McGregor celebrates after securing the league title following a 2-0 win at Hearts on May 7. (Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group)

"We've got two weeks to go and you're going to be sitting on the beach in the summer wishing you had a game of football so you want to play as much as you can," McGregor said. "I'll obviously see what the manager thinks for the next few games but as always I think everybody in the building is desperate to play football."

McGregor's ability to play so many games without any discernible diminishment in his performance levels prompts the question – how does he do it? Does he do anything specific diet-wise? Sleep? Physio? Any weird techniques? Or is he just some AI experiment half-human, half-robot hybrid?

"Just be as professional as you can be the majority of the time," is his more logical explanation. "You're only in the building here for four or five hours a day. It then becomes really important what you do away from the place. You go home, you rest, you eat properly, you sleep properly, then your job is to come back in the following day and do it all again. It requires a lot of discipline within yourself and as a collective. We're paid to play football. That is our number one focus so that's the way we have to live our life. I believe if you do that 99 per cent of the time then you'll be in good shape and be fit to play whenever you're called upon. That's just the way that I look at it. I try to maximise as much playing time as I can throughout my career and a lot of that is down to just living your life properly and trying to stay professional as much as you can, and just be ready to play whenever you're asked."

McGregor's ever-present status from one campaign to the next reflects the longevity of his Celtic career. He has been with the club since the age of eight, joining the youth academy in the same season that Martin O'Neill's fabled side reached the UEFA Cup final in Seville. "I was obviously still pretty young at that point but there was a huge buzz about the place,” he recalled. “When you're right at the very start of your journey and you see the first team in a European final, that tells you the magnitude of the club and where it was at the time. Some big players, a big manager at the time as well, and just a real feel-good factor. That filtered through all the youth teams as well. When you see the first team at that level straight away your mindset is that you have to get to that level. If that's where the first team is playing you have to try to push and progress as much as you can so hopefully one day when you step through that door as a first-team player you can try to reach the same level as what these guys did."

Callum McGregor was promoting the Celtic Foundation Badge Day 2023 after becoming a Foundation Ambassador. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

Now, with the 20-year anniversary of that 3-2 defeat to Jose Mourinho's Porto approaching on Sunday, McGregor admits it would be a dream to lead Celtic back to a European final, with Rangers showing just last year that the Old Firm can still compete for trophies on the continent. "Every season you see European football is so highly contested," he added. “There are so many big clubs spending a lot of money to try and win these tournaments. For Celtic, it's certainly in their history that they can compete at this level and I think that's the level for us to try and get to, and when we're in there, compete, and try and go as far as we can in these competitions. It's always a goal when you look at the start of the season to get out of the group stage, try and go on a run and see what happens from there.”

Could Postecoglou be the manager to lead Celtic back to a European final? "We all hope so," McGregor added. "We see how he works. He's very on the ball in terms of recruitment and things like that. He's always trying to push the club forward and he's a real strong figurehead for the club which is exactly what this club needs. We just try to get better every time that we're together. Every game we play and every training session. He never puts any limits on what we can achieve so the more he pushes us then hopefully we can try and get to that level. I know he's an ambitious guy as well so hopefully with all that ambition we've got in the building, we can try and do it."