Joe Hart

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CrNWZ_RolG8/?igshid=ZWIzMWE5ZmU3Zg==

 

He's on Ben Fosters podcast next week

 

How Joe Hart rebuilt his career at Celtic





The former England goalkeeper had fallen down — but in Celtic he has found a club with a bucketload of energy and compassion





Joe Hart emerged from Parkhead after the game and as usual a small throng of fans gathered around him for selfies and autographs. He had just kept another clean sheet, this one against Morton in a routine 5-0 Celtic win in the Scottish Cup. One step closer to another trophy. Life was good. An old pal spotted the scene. “I was in a car with some people coming away from the ground when I saw him,” said Adrian Bevington, who was managing director of the FA’s Club England when Hart was the country’s best goalkeeper. “I got out of the car and just shouted, ‘Harty’ across the car park, hoping he might actually turn around because I’d called him ‘Harty’ rather than Joe. And he did. He shouted back and we walked towards each other and I got a massive hug off him.”
Bevington got a vibe off Hart too: of a guy who was content and fulfilled again. Here was a player so beaten down by poor form and criticism that two years ago, when he first spoke to the Celtic manager, Ange Postecoglou, about coming to Scotland, he confided in him, feeling vulnerable and needing a bit of love. Celtic have given him that by the bucketload. Across 98 games and two trophies — soon to be three when the league is clinched again and four if the Scottish Cup follows — Hart has been rebuilt. “You could just see he was really in a good place,” Bevington said. “He looked happy. He looked like a guy who was really enjoying his football again, and therefore his life.”
Only two players have won all six major domestic trophies in England and Scotland — it is a neat quiz question because one is predictable, the other less so — and Hart is two games from joining them. Celtic are favourites to beat Rangers in Sunday’s Scottish Cup semi-final and if they get through that it would be astonishing if they did not blow away Caledonian Thistle or Falkirk in the final to give Hart his clean sweep after only two seasons. And he has been a key player in a dominant side, starting 95 per cent of Celtic’s 103 games since he signed in August, 2021, conceding the fewest goals per game and helping deliver the highest percentage of clean sheets in Scotland.


When Fraser Forster was the Celtic goalkeeper some fans used to grumble about him missing out on England caps because Hart was chosen instead. Hart has won over those doubters, not least because of his obvious passion and enthusiasm for all things Celtic. When they beat Rangers in the Viaplay Cup final in February Sir Rod Stewart messaged him on Instagram after the game: “You kept us in it big man.” Hart’s own posts to his 1.4 million followers are a series of action and celebration shots with his accompanying comments heaping praise on his club. “What a special place to play football,” he said of Parkhead.
Hart was the golden boy whose career soared from 2008, plateaued around 2013 and came apart from Euro 2016 until Postecoglou’s rescue call five years later. Across eight seasons as Manchester City’s first choice he won two Premier League titles. There were four Golden Glove awards, for keeping the most clean sheets over a league season, and 75 England caps with 43 clean sheets under Fabio Capello, Roy Hodgson and Gareth Southgate. He was his country’s No 1 at Euro 2012, the 2014 World Cup and Euro 2016, his crossroads tournament, where he was at fault for poor goals conceded against Wales and Iceland. And then came Pep Guardiola.
Hart has always been a goalkeeper who mixed consistent excellence and world-class shot-stopping with occasional high-profile errors, the latter picked apart because he was at a level where there was no hiding place. But with Guardiola, the issue was Hart not being reliable enough with the ball at his feet, a Pep prerequisite. Hart was immediately dropped for * Caballero and then Claudio Bravo and his confidence began to tailspin. There were dwindling returns from season-long loans at Torino and West Ham United and after a final cap in 2017 he was not picked for the 2018 World Cup. From 2019 to 2021 he was with Burnley and then Tottenham Hotspur without playing a single Premier League game. Spurs signed him as their No 3, the back-up to the back-up.
In an interview last year Hart revealed that when Postecoglou called him in 2021 he told the Australian: “You can take this as me being vulnerable. I just need a bit of love.” The Celtic manager had just taken over and was picking through the debris of their 2020-21 campaign, the only one of the past 12 seasons in which they failed to win the league. The goalkeeper Vasilis Barkas had been nowhere near good enough. An upgrade was necessary but fans were sceptical about Hart. Postecoglou’s way of playing — relying on a goalkeeper who was comfortable on the ball and could play outside the box — required a skillset that Guardiola felt was beyond Hart. If Postecoglou had similar reservations, he set them aside, persuaded by Hart’s experience, personality and quality.




The worry was that when we sign a player of that kind of calibre you are looking back to people like Roy Keane,” Paul John Dykes, host of A Celtic State of Mind podcast, said. “And it’s almost as if they are out to grass, a racehorse running around in an empty field and counting down the days until they retire. So there was that concern. Joe had kinda been written off by Pep and we knew that Ange plays out from the back too, so there was a concern there: can Joe Hart do that with the ball at his feet? I was really on the fence about it.
“We needed Joe Hart to prove himself to us, which sounds strange when you consider what he has achieved in the game. But he has done that. He’s done that in abundance. Recently he pulled off a save against Hearts and if it happened anywhere else you are saying it is world class.”
Goalkeepers have it comparatively easy at Celtic but Hart stepped up to become a reliable base of the defence and a commanding presence on and off the pitch. There have been wobbles and heart-in-mouth moments with the ball at his feet and he was slated for gifting a goal by passing straight to an RB Leipzig player, one of 15 conceded in six Champions League games. But there have been far more inspirational performances and he is a confidence player who has fed off Parkhead’s limitless energy and adulation. “You need a goalkeeper who’s going to make big saves at big moments,” Callum McGregor said. “It’s brilliant to have someone of that ilk and that personality in the group.”
McGregor is the Celtic captain but Hart has been a visible leader too, one of those who sets the benchmark according to Postecoglou. “You see subtle examples of it,” Dykes said. “We were playing at Dens Park and Josip Juranovic was getting involved, already on a yellow, and Joe Hart grabbed him from behind and put him in the goal net. And you saw it against Rangers the other week when it was him that actually grabbed the captain when he was getting involved with Borna Barisic. And there was the incident at Ibrox with the broken glass [a bottle was thrown into Hart’s goalmouth at an Old Firm game last April]. He is actually saying to the referee, ‘I’m going to take the team off the park here unless that’s sorted out.’ He has been a revelation. Ange has this incredible ability to almost resurrect careers.”




Hart once had a reputation for taking himself too seriously. A bit cocky. A bit of preening. Keane called him arrogant. “Too wealthy, too famous, too much ego — Joe Hart epitomises everything that’s wrong,” one headline said after Euro 2016. Celtic staff do not recognise any of that in Hart. He is polite and engaging around their Lennoxtown training centre and is well liked. Barkas was aloof and did not want to know; Hart arrives for training and asks the staff how they are doing. He made a good first impression with team-mates by laughing and taking it well when teased about Leigh Griffiths putting two free kicks past him for Scotland at Hampden. In his dealings with the Scottish media he has been first class.
Postecoglou recently highlighted Hart’s importance to Celtic’s structure and playing style. Still, this month he turned 36 and as he approaches the final year of a three-year contract there has been no sign of an extension so far. The offer of an additional 12 months does seem likely but Postecoglou will be looking for an eventual successor. Hart is seen as a natural to eventually go into coaching. As for the quiz question, it is Kenny Dalglish and Andrei Kanchelskis he could soon join by scooping the domestic clean sweep.
“What you have to understand with Joe Hart is that he’s a big character,” Bevington said. “He’s a guy who has had a great career which had a dip, and he’s come out of the dip and found a new home where he is loved, with a coach who loves him, where he’s got a crowd that loves him. Even though he’s not playing international football any more he’s still getting to play at the top level in Europe and performing in a wonderful stadium in a wonderful football city. You can see he’s thrived on what Glasgow’s given him.”

 

Great post!

 

Who is the other player who's won the treble in England and Scotland? My mind has went blank.

 

Kanchelskis?

 

Yeah, it's in the second last paragraph of that article.

 

Nobody has won the domestic treble in Scotland and England

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No brain farts today please Joe, stay focused and another Scottish cup final is coming your way.

 

Wasn't peppered but was excellent with anything they threw at him from corners or that. Strong hand to everything..

 

Excellent performance, his best in some time.

 

Thought he was brilliant today, came for those crosses.

 

Best game against Rangers yet, he was magnificent. Coming off his line to punch numerous balls away from the danger zone and some terrific saves.

 

Great performance, most commanding I've seen him.

 

Class today. Enjoyed him squaring up to Morelos. It's a side of his game we dont really see but he's playing for the jersey.