ALISTAIR Johnston has revealed how getting married helped him get over the disappointment of Celtic losing the Scottish Cup final to Aberdeen – and vowed the Parkhead club’s separation from the oldest trophy in world football will only be a temporary one.
Canadian right back Johnston was devastated when he had his penalty kick saved by Dimitar Mitov in a dramatic shootout at Hampden back in May and his side failed to triumph in the Scottish Gas-sponsored competition and complete another domestic treble.
The defender put the painful reverse firmly behind him when he married his long-term partner Peyton Pesavento at Pollok House in Glasgow in June with several of his team-mates in attendance. However, he has made being reunited with the Scottish Cup a top priority in the 2025/26 campaign.
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“Once I got to the wedding and saw my friends and family I pretty quickly forgot about football,” he said. “You remember that there are still more important things in life, your family, your wife.
“It was nice to kind of put the failure of that cup final behind me and kind of really just reset, focus on the people that were there and then get ready for the internationals.
“But once we got through that tournament, I remembered, ‘Okay, we've got something to come back and try and win back when I get back into Scotland’. So I think there's an extra level of motivation now.
Johnston added, “If you never lose, then you kind of forget what the feeling of winning really is. I want to sit here and say that I want to win every single trophy. That is the case.
“But, at the same time, when you do lose one you probably come back with a bit more of a fire in your belly to go out there and really kick on that following year. So I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing.
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“It is in the past. Obviously, we would have loved to have won a treble. It didn't happen. But now that gives us all the extra motivation to go out there and try and make it happen this year.
“So that's a really positive thing that comes out of it. I think you need to try and find what are the learnings and the growths from that match so we can learn from it and make sure that doesn't happen again. But at the same time, that's football. You're not going to win every single match.
“We'd love to do that. So I think that, you know, going into this year, it really does just kind of add a little bit of extra fire to everyone that's in this. You want to put things right. Ideally, to have our trophies back is kind of the plan.”
