Darren O'Dea lands new Celtic role as part of restructuring that will see him work alongside Brendan Rodgers

Celtic B team head coach Darren O'Dea has been promoted to the position of Professional Player Pathway Manager.

The highly-rated Irishman will move into the new role and be entrusted with developing the progression of young players at the club. The former Hoops defender, 37, will work closely with Brendan Rodgers and the Parkhead club's academy coaches to help bridge the route between youth and first-team football.

O'Dea - who came through the ranks at Parkhead in 2006 - will also manage loan opportunities which support the player pathway and development opportunities. He said: “I am really looking forward to giving everything to this exciting new opportunity. Having been being fortunate enough to be part of a Celtic first-team environment in my career I am passionate about working to give other young players this same opportunity.

"In this new role, I will be working between our Academy structure and the first-team environment to ensure that we do all we can to provide the very best pathway and levels of support to allow our young players to reach their full potential and to ultimately deliver at first-team level."

Brendan Rodgers said: "Celtic has such a rich history of creating and developing its own players and is something which I am hugely passionate about. This important new position will allow us to give real focus to ensuring the very best possible pathway and level of support to bringing our younger players successfully into the first-team environment, so they too can create their own history at the club.

"Darren has great experience in this area and he is the perfect candidate to work between our Academy and first team and I am sure his work will achieve very positive results for the club and our supporters."

Chris McCart, Head of Celtic's Youth Academy, added: "We are delighted that Darren has been appointed to this role, which we believe will be very important in preparing our young players and allowing them to flourish and ultimately be part of our first team.

"Darren has a huge knowledge of the club, our Academy and, of course, the first-team environment and so he is very well qualified to be managing this really important area of player progression. Everyone at the Club congratulates him on his new appointment."