| Match Pictures | Matches: 1998 – 1999 | 1998-1999 Pictures |
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Trivia
- Craig Burley was on the way back from injury and played 80 minutes of an U21 game
- On 3/2 FIFA gave Celtic 10 days to pay the outstanding £2.1million to Croatia Zagreb in the Mark Viduka transfer saga. Celtic had paid Viduka £1.5million, and Melbourne Knights £600k and the remainder of £900k to Croatia Zagreb. The Croatians came back with a letter which they said showed that Viduka had waived his rights to the £1.5mill.
- It was alleged that Frank O’Callaghan was about to be appointed non-executive Chairman. 59 year old O’Callaghan had been Financial Director of Stakis Hotels for 20 years before retiring and was a life-long Celtic supporter.
- John Murray QC, the former Court of Session judge Lord Dervaird, was to be the independent arbiter on Celtic's claims that the SFA delayed the registration of striker Jorge Cadete.
- David Hannah was transferred to Dundee Utd in a cut-price £300k move signing a three and a half year contract. Celtic also sold John Paul McBride to St Johnstone for £150k.
- Darren Jackson returned from his loan to Coventry, having turned down a move to Chinese side Dalian Wanda.
- Celtic plc half year result were out. Headline pre-tax profits slumped to £2.2m from £7.6m previously. There was a £3m writedown in the value of existing players, offset by a modest £415,000 gain from the sale of Malcolm Mackay and Paddy Kelly. Turnover increased nearly 25% to £19.3m during the first half, underpinned by a big increase in ticket revenues following the enlargement of the Celtic Park stadium. Revenue from ticket sales soared by £2.5m to £9.5m as the stadium remained packed with near capacity crowds. Merchandising revenue – the sale of club strips and other memorabilia – jumped £500,000 to £3.2m, helped by the opening of two new shops and growing sales on the Internet. The results were described as “quite respectable”.
- Mjallby had recovered from a knock. Jackie McNamara was back in the squad but did not start. Simon Donnelly was out with a hip injury.
Review
Walk in the Park and a Larsson master-class
Teams
Celtic: Gould, Boyd , Mjallby, Stubbs (Annoni 76), Mahe, Riseth, Moravcik (Burchill 87), Lambert, O'Donnell (Blinker 87), Brattbakk, Larsson.
Subs Not Used: McNamara, Corr.
Goals: Larsson 21, 24, 66 pen.
Hearts: McKenzie, Pressley, Ritchie, Weir, Murray, Naysmith, Fulton, Salvatori, Flogel, Callaghan (Guerin 81), Lilley (Quitongo 56).
Subs Not Used: McPherson, Horn, Strang.
Bookings: Lambert (Celtic) Murray, Lilley (Hearts)
Ref: S Dougal (Glasgow).
Att: 59,815
Articles
- Match Report (see below)
- Manager Interview
“I feel he (Larsson) is the best player in the country at the moment. He is an all-rounder with an eexcellent touch.
“The important thing is that the players are supporting each other, especially as we play these quite quick moves and Henrik can react to that.
“A major factor is that he is able to maintain his form and fitness constantly and he has outstanding vision. There are many factions of his play that not all players have.
“We took off Alan Stubbs as a precautionary measure as he was sufferingwith an ankle problem.
“But he is another in outstanding form with his reading of the game and strong variation of passes.
”The supporters have also played an important part in this run of victories as the players react to their motivation and the atmosphere created.”
Pictures
Stats
| Celtic | Hearts | |
| Bookings | 1 | 2 |
| Fouls | 16 | 12 |
| Shots on Target | 6 | 1 |
| Corners | 9 | 1 |
| Offside | 2 | 1 |
Henrik gives hopeless Hearts an object Larsson in finishing
Scotland on Sunday 07/02/1999
Celtic 3 Hearts 0
THESE glorious hours of Sweden's Henrik Larsson illuminating Scottish football will surely receive rich appraisal in the history books, and this match will be one entry. By the 65th minute, Larsson had already plundered a succulent hat-trick. By the finish, the picture was hazily divided between the rounded performance of this player in its own right, and the bitter, abject, horrendous misery it had cut into the faces of Hearts.
Celtic may have thrived, but to ignore the plight of Hearts these days would be to be negligent about yesterday's events. This side of Jim Jefferies now has confidence and inspiration seeping from it, and it shows in their play and the stagnant mood of their supporters. Hearts now haven't won a league game since December 6th, a nine-match stretch, and, more remarkably, they haven't won any away fixture on their league rota since March last year.
Today, they are listing into a relegation sweat. On that bright, bristling Scottish Cup final day of May, could anyone envisage this?
Celtic enjoyed a mesmerising quality in Larsson's work, but Hearts were found wanting in pockets all over the park. They had to do without Stephane Adam, through injury, which was a bad enough start. They also played David Weir at right-back, which half Weir's mind would agitate over, while the other surely looked ahead to a trial with Liverpool next week. In midfield, Hearts also had two young lightweights, Grant Murray and Stuart Callaghan, the latter having had such disparate experiences as playing as a trialist in Clydebank and Finland, which, when you think that he was cast alongside Stefano Salvatori, who last week was in China, made a Hearts midfield good for reading the National Geographic, but not one suited to blocking Celtic.
Poor Jim Jefferies, already mentally flatter than a pancake at the trials of this season, later looked as if his dog had been squashed by a fire engine. "Things are not going well for us," he whimpered. "We didn't look like scoring. We're lacking belief right now. Larsson was exceptional and we just didn't know how to handle him." Jefferies seemed to cite Hearts' next four games – against Dundee, Dundee United, St Johnstone and Aberdeen – as games only a masochist would look forward to.
Celtic and their followers deserved their lofty glorying in all this. Larsson's hat-trick, the third being a penalty, was almost the least of his feats, with his feints and turns and clever, slippery passes to team-mates opening up angles all over the park. In mere statistics, there is also a brutality about Larsson's very presence this season. He has now scored 19 goals in 23 league matches, a prolific poacher's instinct, except, of course, that this player is no mere poacher.
This fine man, Dr Josef Venglos, later paid Larsson the ultimate compliment, calling him "one of the best players playing in Europe at the moment." Wariness is welcome on such occasions when seemingly sweeping judgments are cast like this, except that Venglos, wise to the world and venerable in age, is not normally prone to such heady tosh. Larsson's spliced interplay with Lubomir Moravcik and even Harald Brattbakk could have racked-up many more for Celtic, a lasting image lending credence to Venglos's thoughts.
Brattbakk, the enigma from Norway, was back to hearing catcalls from the crowd here, especially when Larsson set him free inside the box in the second half and he heaved the ball high over. Yet this Celtic season is strewn with all sorts of anomalies. Even Brattbakk's scoring ratio stands at five in 10 league starts, much better than many other strikers who have been hoisted to the gallows by football crowds.
Larsson's work against Celtic's opponents involves so much aggravating, pesting and furrowing among defenders, but even for this wirey performer, not much above the standard 5ft 10in, the sight of him pasting over more bulky centre-halves in the air is still quite rare. Poor Steven Pressley, a Larsson victim, will vouch for it happening yesterday: in the 21st minute, leading to Celtic's first goal, which Pressley had the pain of watching lying sprawled across the grass.
Poor Billy Brown, the Hearts assistant-manager, who had already been lunging about his dugout with a yellow fever, found it an excruciating moment. Tom Boyd's high punt must be given the benefit of being called a pass, and Pressley, in leaping combat with Larsson, simply crumpled under the challenge. The alert Swede was allowed to stride forth and knock the ball past Roddy McKenzie.
Hearts, with their ranks beefed-up with this pair of slender youths, had actually begun quite breezily but were now to be blown away. Moravcik's corner in the 25th minute flew tantalisingly into McKenzie's space, whereupon Larsson plunged his face and dreadlocks before Steve Fulton, burying his header again past McKenzie. Not surprisingly, the savaged-looking Hearts boss was bleating about these "criminal" goals afterwards.
Typically, only Larsson could have released Phil O'Donnell into the Hearts box after 65 minutes, who in turn was upended, allowing the Swede to belt home the penalty. Hearts ended up feeling trashed by a Swede who is both courteous and dangerous.