Celtic Player of the Day – Bobby Carroll, scorer of Celtic’s first European goal

The Celtic Star

·8 May 2025

Celtic Player of the Day – Bobby Carroll, scorer of Celtic’s first European goal

Bobby Carroll was one of the “Kelly Kids” of the early 1960s of whom much was expected, and indeed much might have been delivered if they had been better coached and managed…

He had already won a Scottish Junior Cup medal with Irvine Meadow before he made his Celtic debut in 1959.

He was fast and looked good with the advantage that he could play on either wing and there were times in the 1961/62 season when the forward line of Chalmers, Jackson, Hughes, Divers and Carroll looked as if it might just bring the glory days back.

OneFootball Videos

Bobby Carroll – Celtic’s First Goalscorer in European Football – speaking to the official Celtic FC website in on 26 September 2012…

Bobby Carroll at Celtic Park in 2012. Photo Celtic FC

“It makes me feel good that I’ve got a wee bit of history,” Bobby Carroll said. “It does mean a lot. They are claiming the first one was an own goal but it wasn´t, as it beat the goalkeeper. “He was out of his six-yard box and I was just in front of him. Mike Jackson cut it back to me and I put it in past him. The defender came running in and tried to stop it but he couldn’t. “The Spanish press said it was an own goal but I would only say it was an own goal if it was going past the post and he had deflected it in. But he couldn’t stop it. “If it had been the goalkeeper on the line and he had put his hand on it and it had went in, it would have been a goal for me so that´s the way how I look at it. The other goal I scored was quite similar. Mike Jackson cut it back from the byline and I hit it past the goalkeeper.”

In November 1961, Carroll scored a great goal against Dundee at Dens Park, and things looked good, but inconsistency was the bane and the promising season ended in tears. Carroll does however have the honour in September 1962 of having scored Celtic’s first goal in European football against Valencia.

In early 1963 he was on his way to St Mirren

He might have been better if he had been persevered with, but in early 1963 he was on his way to St Mirren and then Dundee United for whom he scored on that hot day at Tannadice which opened the 1965/66 season.

He was a man who might have been a Celtic great, for he certainly had the makings of one. It was a pity that his time at Parkhead was one of such chaos. He died in 2016.

David Potter

*Article from The Celtic Star archives celebrating the outstanding Celtic writing of the late, great Celtic Historian David Potter. More tomorrow.

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Celtic Player of the Day – Bobby Carroll, scorer of Celtic’s first European goal | OneFootball