Kelechi Iheanacho is a Scottish Premiership champion. Celtic came from a goal down to beat Hearts 3-1 at Celtic Park on Saturday, claiming their 56th league title on 82 points and ending Hearts’ dream of a first championship in 66 years with Iheanacho playing a part from the bench in the second half.
Celtic 3-1 Hearts | Scottish Premiership Final Day | Celtic Park (Paradise)
Steinwender 38′ (Hearts) | Engels pen. 45+’ (Celtic) | Maeda (Celtic) | Osmand (Celtic)
Iheanacho: On for Tounekti at half-time
Celtic: 56th Scottish Premiership title | 82 points | Two ahead of Hearts
Iheanacho season: 8 goals, 23 appearances across all competitions
Kelechi Iheanacho came to Celtic Park as a free agent from Leicester City last summer. He leaves the 2025-26 Scottish Premiership season as a champion, with a title medal and a story that has defined Scottish football’s most dramatic closing stretch in living memory. The journey from the 99th-minute penalty at Motherwell midweek to Saturday’s Celtic Park celebration took four days and produced the kind of emotional arc that football rarely scripts with such perfect timing.
Hearts, who needed only a draw to win the title for the first time since 1960, led through Michael Steinwender’s 38th-minute header and looked for much of the first half as if 66 years of waiting might finally end at Celtic Park of all places. Arne Engels equalised from the penalty spot just before the break to restore parity at exactly the point when Hearts needed their lead to hold, and the second half belonged entirely to Celtic, with Daizen Maeda and Callum Osmand adding the goals that turned a draw into a 3-1 victory and sent the 60,000 supporters at Paradise into the kind of celebration that requires no narration.
Iheanacho entered the match at half-time, replacing Sebastian Tounekti, and played his part in the second-half performance that produced both goals. The Super Eagles striker’s presence, movement and hold-up play in the second period contributed to the pressure that eventually broke Hearts down. Nigerian football fans celebrating with him can use the Bet9ja Scottish champions promo as the celebrations in Glasgow continue into the weekend.
A Season That Defied Every Expectation
It is worth pausing on what Iheanacho’s 2025-26 Celtic season actually delivered. Eight goals in 23 appearances across all competitions, the majority as a substitute, in a league he had never played in before, for a club whose expectations he was unfamiliar with, in a city he arrived at without the fanfare of a marquee signing. He came in quietly and made himself indispensable at the moments that mattered most.
| Competition | Appearances | Goals | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scottish Premiership | — | — | 99th-min pen vs Motherwell | Title winner vs Hearts |
| Scottish Cup | — | — | Cup run contribution |
| Europa League | — | — | European contribution |
| All Competitions Total | 23 | 8 | Scottish Premiership champion |
His five goals in his final seven appearances, a run that began as Celtic’s title challenge appeared to be falling apart, is the statistic that defines the season. A team that goes into the last match of the year needing to win and cannot guarantee its striker will start relies on that player to be ready when the moment arrives. When Brendan Rodgers sent Iheanacho on at halftime with the score at 1-1 and the title in the balance, he was trusting a player who has made a career of arriving for the important moments. The trust was repaid.
What The Title Means In The Context Of His Career
Iheanacho at 29 has now won the FA Cup with Leicester City in 2021, the League Cup, and the Scottish Premiership with Celtic in 2026. His trophy collection places him in a specific category of Nigerian players who have claimed major European domestic honours during the peak years of their careers, a list that includes fewer names than the Super Eagles’ depth of talent across European football would suggest it should.
He arrives at the 2026 World Cup in the United States this summer with a championship medal fresh from May and a confidence that no amount of pre-tournament preparation can manufacture. Super Eagles head coach Eric Chelle had him in his plans already, but a player who has just won a title by scoring match-turning goals in the most pressurised finishing position available, from the substitutes’ bench in a season-defining match, arrives at international tournament football in a fundamentally different state of mind to one who has come through a forgettable club season. Readers celebrating Iheanacho’s title alongside all Celtic supporters across Nigeria can use the Bet9ja YOHAIG champion’s code for the best current offer as the summer of football begins.
The Reaction From The Nigerian Football Community
Throughout this session, FootballInNigeria.com.ng has tracked the Super Eagles community’s reaction to Iheanacho’s closing-weeks run at Celtic. Wilfred Ndidi’s “Hot Akara” verdict after the Motherwell penalty became the shorthand for how Nigerian football supporters were feeling as the title race reached its climax. Osimhen’s “E dey body till thy kingdom come,” Awoniyi’s “E clear gan,” and Emenike’s “The boy is nice” all arrived within minutes of the Fir Park whistle blowing that night.
Saturday’s title confirms that every word of that reaction was deserved. Hot Akara. E dey body. A champion. The Celtic Park crowd that celebrated on Saturday included Nigerian supporters who had followed Iheanacho’s career from the Manchester City debut through the FA Cup final and all the way to Glasgow, and their celebrations on Saturday afternoon carried the accumulated weight of every previous chapter in that story. He is a Scottish Premiership champion, he did it in the most dramatic season the league has produced in decades, and he is 29 years old heading into a World Cup.
Hearts And The 66-Year Wait That Continues
In the fullness of the moment, it is worth acknowledging what Hearts endured on Saturday. A club that had led the Scottish Premiership for most of the season, that had taken a first-half lead at Celtic Park in the title decider, that had come within a penalty kick and two Celtic goals of winning their first championship since 1960, left Paradise empty-handed after one of the most emotionally demanding afternoons in the club’s recent history.
Michael Steinwender’s header deserved a better fate. Derek McInnes built a Hearts side that reached 80 points in a season where most observers gave them no realistic title chance and came within an Arne Engels penalty of achieving something historic. The 66-year wait continues, but the 2025-26 campaign has given the Tynecastle faithful a season they will talk about as long as they follow football. As reported by FootballInNigeria.com.ng, Celtic are Scottish Premiership champions for the 56th time, Kelechi Iheanacho is among them, and the Nigerian football community has one more reason to be proud of a generation of Super Eagles players who are leaving their marks across European football from Glasgow to Istanbul, from LaLiga to the Bundesliga, and everywhere in between. Fans wanting to carry the celebrations through the summer can also use the Bet9ja win big page for the latest offers as the World Cup season begins.
📌 Did You Know?
- Celtic’s 56th Scottish Premiership title places them as the most decorated club in the history of Scottish league football, well ahead of Rangers, who have won the title 55 times. The rivalry between the two clubs for historical supremacy in Scottish football has been one of the defining storylines of the league’s entire 130-year history.
- Iheanacho scored the goal that won Leicester City the FA Cup in 2021, the club’s first-ever Cup triumph, and has now followed that with a Scottish Premiership title at Celtic. His record of scoring in or contributing to major cup or league-winning moments is one of the more distinctive features of a career that has always saved its best for the highest-stakes occasions.
- Hearts last won the Scottish Premiership in the 1959-60 season, a year in which Harold Macmillan was UK Prime Minister, Elvis Presley was completing his military service in West Germany, and Celtic Park had not yet undergone many of the renovations that make it the 60,000-capacity ground it is today. The 66-year gap since their last title represents one of the longest championship droughts for a Scottish top-flight club.
- Martin O’Neill, Celtic’s manager, previously won three Scottish Premiership titles in his first stint as Celtic manager between 2000 and 2005. His return to the club as manager for the 2025-26 season brought with it immediate championship success, making him one of only a handful of managers in Scottish football history to win the league title in multiple separate managerial tenures at the same club.
- Arne Engels, whose penalty before half-time equalised for Celtic and shifted the momentum of the match, is a Belgian midfielder who joined Celtic from Augsburg in the summer of 2024. His ability to step up and convert from the spot in a high-pressure, high-stakes title decider reflects the kind of character that Celtic’s recruitment strategy has consistently prioritised in recent seasons.
- Daizen Maeda, who scored Celtic’s second goal on Saturday, is a Japanese international winger who has been one of the Hoops’ most consistently productive players since arriving from Gent in January 2022. His goal in the title decider was his most significant contribution to a Celtic winning moment since his early months at the club when he scored crucial goals in the club’s early post-pandemic title campaigns.
- Iheanacho’s Nigerian FA Cup final goal for Leicester City was scored against Chelsea at Wembley in May 2021, in a match where Chelsea were considered heavy favourites. His ability to deliver in matches where the opposition is expected to win and the pressure is at its highest is a pattern that ran from Wembley in 2021 to Celtic Park in 2026, separated by five years but connected by the same quality of nerve.
