Rodgers has a more pragmatic and patient style and whilst it\u2019s not as exciting as Ange\u2019s, the current Celtic manager<\/a> brought success to Parkhead in the Champions League.<\/p>\n And as former Celtic coach Darren O\u2019Dea<\/a> embarks on the next stage of his career at Swansea City, the ex-Player Pathway Manager shares who had a \u2018huge influence\u2019 on him out of Rodgers<\/a> and Ange at the Bhoys.<\/p>\n O\u2019Dea joined Celtic in 2019 as the U18s youth coach. He was then promoted to the Celtic B team manager in 2021 under Postecoglou before being elevated to the Player Pathway Manager under Rodgers.<\/p>\n And here, the Swansea City coach shares who out of the two Celtic icons were the biggest influence on his Parkhead career.<\/p>\n O\u2019Dea told The Herald<\/a>, \u201cWhere I am now is down to seven years of really hard work. What I learned at Motherwell and Celtic has been superb.<\/p>\n \u201cBrendan was a pleasure to work under and he was so helpful and generous with his time.<\/p>\n \u201cAnge was incredible. He was a huge influence on me. He mentored me and I\u2019ll always be appreciative of the insight and knowledge he passed on to me.<\/p>\n \u201cMy time at Celtic was great. It\u2019s a brilliant football club with an unbelievable fan base.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll always look back with great fondness of my few years there in the various roles.\u201d<\/p>\n Who is Celtic\u2019s current Player Pathway Manager<\/p>\n When O\u2019Dea left Celtic to take on the Swansea role, the club moved quickly to replace the former defender.<\/p>\n Shaun Maloney<\/a> is now in the role and it seems that he has a huge part to play in Celtic\u2019s development<\/a> of youth.<\/p>\n Paul Tisdale said that Maloney is responsible for \u2018optimising the talents\u2019 of Celtic\u2019s young players and Rodgers said that he believes the former Hoops winger will make a \u2018great contribution\u2019 to developing talent at the club.<\/p>\n Hopefully, Maloney can get the ball rolling and find a pathway for Celtic\u2019s youngsters into the first team soon before the club lose any more talented players to the English Premier League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brendan Rodgers and Ange Postecoglou both brought different qualities to Celtic. Postecoglou brought an explosive brand of football…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[34203,7336,86513,218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-198797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-ange-postecoglou","tag-brendan-rodgers","tag-darren-odea","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Celtic](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-1258437173-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Richard Sellers\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar via Getty ImagesSwansea\u2019s Darren O\u2019Dea admits Ange Postecoglou was \u2018incredible\u2019 at Celtic<\/p>\n