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Personal
Fullname: Craig William Burley
aka: Craig Burley
Height: 6.01
Weight: 12.13
Born: 24 September 1971
Birthplace: Ayr
Signed: 25 July 1997
Left: 1 December 1999
Position: Midfielder
Debut: […]
Squad No.: […]
Internationals: Scotland
International Caps: 46
International Goals: 3
Biog
| “Craig Burley has more teeth than he has charm or insight, and the monosynaptic bawbag doesn’t have many teeth.” Christopher Brookmyre (Author & St Mirren Fan) |
When Burley arrived from FA Cup winners Chelsea in the summer of 1997 for £2.5m few Celtic fans would have dared dream that the Ayrshire man would have the impact he eventually did. Indeed, despite being a Scotland international Burley was a little bit of an unknown quantity to many in his native land having played all of his club football upto that point with the Stamford Bridge side.
An industrious rather than graceful attacking midfielder, Burley quickly settled into life at Celtic Park and his willingness to get forward at every opportunity quickly won him admirers among the Bhoys following. He scored his first league goals for the Hoops with a brace in a 3-2 victory at Motherwell in September as Jansen’s side at last started to settle after a poor start to their league campaign.
Burley posed a real goal threat from deep and he was exactly the type of midfielder Celtic had sadly been lacking in recent campaigns. His driving and tenacious style of play was a key factor in Celtic’s resurgence which saw them pick up the Coca Cola Cup (League Cup) on November 30 with Burley hitting the last in a 3-0 drubbing of Dundee United at Ibrox.
Paul Lambert had arrived at Celtic Park from Borussia Dortmund just prior to that final, and as Christmas approached, Burley and Lambert began to form a formidable midfield double act. This was perfectly illustrated on January 2 1998 when the pair bagged a goal each as Celtic defeated Rangers 2-0 at Parkhead.
Burley played a vital role in the run in to the Championship climax, netting some crucial goals as the Bhoys finally halted the Rangers juggernaut to claim the title and end the Ibrox side’s dream of 10-in-a-row.
Burley’s invaluable contribution – he scored 15 goals in his debut season – saw him pick up the Scottish Football Writers Association Player of The Year Trophy and he headed off to the World Cup in France as an integral part of the Scotland team. Some Celtic fans spent the summer believing that in Burley they had another potential Celtic great in the making. However things would never be so good again for Burley.
The following season, with Jansen now replaced as coach by Jo Venglos, Burley struggled with injuries and never hit the peak of the previous year. But when John Barnes took over as coach in the summer of 1999 hopes were high that a fully fit Burley would again play a key role in driving Celtic to the title.
In truth, his face never fitted under the Barnes regime, and in December he was off-loaded to Derby County in a £3m deal. It was a move that bewildered the Celtic support who believed Burley still had a lot to offer the club. Indeed, the decision to sell Burley caused many fans to openly question Barnes’ ability to take Celtic forward, although in a later report Burley claimed that Barnes made a last ditch plea to ask him to stay. Although Barnes in a later interview was claiming that Burley was a troublesome influence in the dressing room and had made life difficult for his predecessor too.
Burley was certainly not a boyhood Celtic fan but his effort and attitude on the field while wearing the Hoops had been consistently good. The same could not be said of some of John Barnes’ higher profile, big money signings.
Burley scored 25 goals for Celtic in 93 appearances but he never did fully recapture his form of the Jansen year after that great season. His career sadly faded out due to injury and he moved into the media.
Post-Celtic
He moved on into the media, but not being the brightest of gentlemen, he had to rely on other aspects to keep attention. This has meant he was a blockhead shock-jock with nothing constructive or worthwhile to say.
Sadly, as part of the media, as a Scottish football pundit he did not hide a bitterness or disregard for the club (not that the club did him any harm). It’s been quite disgraceful the way that he has been as anti-Celtic as you could get in the media. Never a good word for Celtic and always wanting to offend. He decided to play up to his pay-masters in the most extreme ways, and pandered to the lowest common denominator.
A classic offensive load of unsubstantiated nonsense as per the below article on season 2010/11 has made him a person non-grata at Celtic. He wanted to make a name in the media as a controversial analyst and play up to his pay masters; he was never going to make it in the punditry game for any cerebral insights. A disgrace, and it’s sad to see an ex-Celt turn & sell-out against a support who gave him nothing less than their full support. He moved over to the US for football punditry once he had burnt his bridges in Scotland, and few if any were sad to see him go.
May 2011
Craig Burley on Celtic, most likely ghost written but it’s all under his name and so responsibility ultimately for it remains with him as he received commission for it.
Anecdote & Quotes
“[Before he had come to Celtic], [one day] during a game of 5s in training, the ball bounced to waist height near the goal. Burley in two minds whether to knee it or head it into the net and in the end did both! Kneeing himself in the face and knocking his teeth out!”
Trevor Sinclair
“Craig Burley has more teeth than he has charm or insight, and the monosynaptic bawbag doesn’t have many teeth.”
Christopher Brookmyre (Author & St Mirren Fan)
Playing Career
| Club | From | To | Fee | League | Scottish/FA Cup | League cup | Other | ||||
| Walsall | 15/03/2004 | 19/05/2004 | Free | 5 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Preston | 27/01/2004 | 15/03/2004 | Free | 1 (3) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Dundee | 12/09/2003 | 25/11/2003 | Free | 1 (1) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 1 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Derby | 01/12/1999 | 12/09/2003 | £3,000,000 | 73 (0) | 10 | 2 (0) | 0 | 5 (0) | 3 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Celtic | 25/07/1997 | 01/12/1999 | £2,500,000 | 61 (3) | 20 | 7 (0) | 2 | 9 (0) | 4 | 13 (0) | 0 |
| Chelsea | 01/09/1989 | 25/07/1997 | Trainee | 86 (28) | 7 | 14 (3) | 4 | 8 (0) | 0 | 3 (0) | 0 |
| Totals | £5,500,000 | 227 (35) | 37 | 23 (3) | 6 | 23 (0) | 7 | 16 (0) | 0 | ||
| goals / game | 0.14 | 0.23 | 0.3 | 0 | |||||||
| Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | ||||
Honours with Celtic
Scottish Premier League
Scottish League Cup
Scottish Football Writers Association
- Player of The Year Trophy 1998
Pictures
Articles
Craig Burley: Celtic sold me to sign Rafael Scheidt
The Scotsman Newspaper 2017
Craig Burley helped Celtic stop Rangers from winning ten-in-a-row during his time with the club. Picture: Robert Perry
CRAIG FOWLER
Former Celtic midfielder Craig Burley insists his 1999 transfer to Derby County was pushed through so the Parkhead club could sign expensive Brazilian flop Rafael Scheidt.
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The Scottish international was a big part of the Celtic side which stopped Rangers winning ten-in-a-row in 1998 after arriving in a £2.5million move from Chelsea.
However, he was out the door two-and-a-half-years later when English Premier League side Derby County paid £3million for his services.
Scheidt, meanhile, was a spectacular flop in Glasgow. The defender would leave the club after only five appearances and is widely regarded as one of the worst transfers in Celtic’s history.
Burley, speaking to the Glasgow Is Green podcast, said he was sold at the behest of director of football Kenny Dalglish and chief executive Allan McDonald.
He said: “This is how the deal came out: Celtic had to raise capital to bring in, wait for it, Rafael Scheidt. Somebody at Celtic thought paying £5.5million for that player was a good idea.
“Celtic weren’t in the business for paying £5.5million for anyone back then without selling someone else. So they were looking for sellable players. [Henrik] Larsson has a broken leg, probably wouldn’t sell him anyway, and they couldn’t sell [Mark] Viduka. Larsson’s got a broken leg and he’s the only fit striker. So you start looking around. Plus, I don’t think they liked me anyway.
“I played hardball for three or four weeks to p*** Kenny off, because Kenny always likes to get his own way. And I knew they had to get the money from my sale for the big hopeless Brazilian.
“I used to go in every morning and they boys would say, ‘are you still here?’ And at the start Kenny was threatening me with everything, like training at night under the floodlights. I was like, ‘I don’t care, do what you want’.”
READ MORE – Rumour Mill: Rangers want Kenny McLean | Caixinha cuts summer holidays | David Murray speaks on EBTs
Despite describing the 1998 triumph as the “greatest time in his career” Burley states he was happy to leave the goldfish bowl of football in Glasgow for something approaching “normality” in the East Midlands.
There was an opportunity to stay when head coach John Barnes made a late appeal to the player, though his mind had been made up
“The morning I was flying down to Derby to conclude my medical, and the wife says, ‘someone’s on the phone for you’. I said, ‘who is it?’. She says, ‘it’s John Barnes’.
“So I get on the phone and I say, ‘Barnesy, I’m leaving to go, what is it?’
“He just says, ‘don’t go, I don’t want you to go’.
“I’m saying to him, ‘I’m getting on a flight in half an hour, I’m doing a medical, I’m going to Derby’. And he’s just saying, ‘don’t go, I don’t want you to go’. But my mind had been made up.
“Clearly, and this was an underlying problem throughout John’s time, there were people behind the scenes pulling the rug from under his feet, and making the job for an inexperienced boss at such a big club even more difficult.
“You couldn’t make it up.”
Saturday Interview: Craig Burley on his missing teeth and not missing Celtic-Rangers rivalry
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/celtic/saturday-interview-craig-burley-on-his-missing-teeth-and-not-missing-celtic-rangers-rivalry-3362534
Craig Burley is worried about his dog when I catch up with him in Connecticut. The family pet came off worse in a scrap with another mutt in the neighbourhood but at least it wasn’t Yogi – bears being one of the hazards of the former Celtic and Scotland star’s new life in New England from where he supplies a worldwide ESPN audience with his pungent punditry.
By Aidan Smith
Saturday, 28th August 2021, 6:55 am
I can never remember – when confronted by a bear are you supposed to run uphill or downhill, assuming of course there’s a gradient nearby?
“Dunno,” says Burley, who presumably need not bother with such contingencies since his famously toothless grimace would be terrifying enough. “What I do know is that you shouldn’t try and hide in a tree. I might have thought bears couldn’t climb them but one day walking the dog on a trail near the house there were two sat on branches 80 foot up.
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“They rake in our bins for food, bold as you like. I’ve found them in my garage before. They even turn up on the local golf course. You’ll be lining up a putt and one will waltz past. The last time I asked an American friend how big. ‘Oh, about 800lbs.’ Steve Nicol [neighbour, fellow ex-Dark Blue international and a colleague at ESPN] has found himself much closer to a bear than I have. He chose the running option and I don’t think he’s moved as fast since he was on the overlap for Liverpool.”
These two are golfing muckers and there must be occasions, maybe when the mercury is hitting 90 like today, that they wonder how heavy the rain is falling back in their native Ayrshire and give grateful thanks. “Well, you say that,” says Cumnock-born Burley, “but by our standards we’ve had quite a wet summer. Never needed a brolly on the course before but I’ve had cause to say to the same American buddy: ‘If I wanted this kind of pishin’ awful weather I would have stayed in Scotland.’
“Connecticut has just been on hurricane alert. Everyone was told to batten down the hatches and then went a bit mad stocking up on food and fuel. My daughter tried to fill up the car but all the pumps were empty. We were ready for seven days without power but thankfully this time we were spared.”
Extreme weather – snow in winter can be waist-high – and those grizzlies are challenges of life Stateside but Burley can cope and isn’t hankering for the homeland. “When I came here eight years ago there were the jibes: ‘Aye, no one will employ you in the UK anymore.’ Not true. I’d been like a blue-arsed fly trying to please everyone. ESPN, working mostly from here, campus 20 minutes away, simplifies my life.” He can espouse his trenchant views and there will still be enough time left in the day to dodge the bears.
“The last time I was back in Scotland was four years ago when my mum passed away but there’s not much about the place that I miss. I love my life here. People are super-friendly and when I walk down the street no one is going to ask me: ‘What school did you go to, bytheway?’ I’m glad I’m 3,000 miles away from that ever happening again.”
Burley, 49, is talking about the Old Firm rivalry. The goldfish bowl. The pressure-cooker. The nest of vipers. Glasgow, with the old foes squaring up again tomorrow, is on its own hurricane alert – also cliche alert.
I’d looked up Burley for two reasons. Scotland have a World Cup qualifier in Vienna next month – what did he remember of Austria away in 1996, a 0-0 draw to begin our march to France’s Mundial? “Absolutely nothing.” Well, at least he’s honest, an essential commodity in his current line of work. “There are too many guys in punditry who take the money but just fudge it,” he complains.
He has no problem, though, recalling just about every spit and cough – every time he outfoxed Richard Gough – from Celtic vs Rangers back in the day. “I hated Old Firm games at first, the intensity is incredible. As a pundit I’m asked why good players fail at Celtic and Rangers. That’s the reason.”
On Sunday, Celtic’s new Japanese striker Kyogo Furuhashi makes his debut in the fixture with racist abuse from Rangers fans ringing in his ears and Burley sympathises. “If you come to Glasgow from elsewhere in the UK you might anticipate the stuff that will fly around. Coming from abroad it must set you back and social media has only made it worse.
“I obviously don’t miss the nastiness and I don’t miss the whataboutery either. Honestly, nothing bores me more than the same people harping on about the same things: ‘That referee’s a Protestant … He must be a Catholic.’ I know that some people love it, thrive on it, but it ain’t my lifestyle choice. I’ll discuss the football but want nothing to do with all the nonsense.”
Okay, comedy interlude: shall we talk gnashers? Burley sans his two front teeth celebrating his 1998 World Cup goal against Norway is one of Scottish football’s classic images, with a tartan tabloid unable to resist the headline “Fangs a million!” He laughs: “If I’m meeting someone for the first time and they ask how I lost them I’ll make up a heroic story about me tussling with a bank robber or, aye, maybe one of those bears.” The truth is more prosaic but still strange, for while training at Chelsea he somehow managed to knee himself in the face.
“My teeth were forced upwards, cracking the jaw bone, and then they came flying out. No one thought to retrieve them, my rotten team-mates couldn’t stop laughing and although the physio wanted to send me to a dentist I was in a rush to get back to Scotland for Christmas.
“So there I was battering up the motorway in my Ford Capri unable to eat my cheese and ham sandwich and of course with no mobile phones I couldn’t call ahead and say: ‘Expect a man with his teeth missing.’ Everyone got a fright, especially my future wife Sheryl. She was working in a hotel and suddenly I burst into the bar with this stupid grin and blood down my shirt. Everyone said I was punching about my weight when she agreed to go out with me. Even more so after that!”
It was Craig Brown who spotted Burley’s international potential, even if he couldn’t see the teeth, and bestowed on him all but one of those 46 caps. The midfielder has much affection for his old boss and his motivational methods: “Before playing Brazil in the 98 World Cup he ran through their team, slagging off the Ronaldos and Rivaldos and all their superstars. Then he came to Bebeto. ‘Let me tell you something about him,’ Craig said. ‘He was offered to Hearts but Jim Jefferies wouldn’t touch him!’”
Back to the Old Firm and it’s interesting to compare the state of Celtic in the early weeks 2021-22 with the club Burley joined at the start of 1997-98. Big players – the Three Amigos, none bigger – had left the season before. Preparations, in our man’s words, were “shambolic”, with Wim Jansen’s “cobbled-together” side making a first-day trip to Edinburgh and losing 2-1, Burley’s fellow debutant Henrik Larsson inadvertently setting up Chic Charley for Hibernian’s winner.
These descriptions were revived by many for Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic right after their slump by the same score at Hearts, though they’ve since clicked as a slick, exciting unit and go to Ibrox in good heart.
Nothing will be decided tomorrow, and, really, the league wasn’t won by Burley’s Celtic with a 2-0 New Year victory in Govan. They still trailed Rangers at the top but only by a point and not the seven had they lost. It was a vital result and one Burley couldn’t have foreseen, given the campaign’s abysmal start.
“Next game after Hibs we lost at home to Dunfermline. I’d come from England’s Premiership, my first time playing in Scotland, and I remember thinking: ‘F***, what have I done?’ In that Dunfermline match I was over at the Jungle hoping someone in the crowd would give me back the ball for a throw-in. This voice piped up: ‘Hey Burley, why don’t you just f*** off back to Chelsea?’ I shouted back: ‘That’s a f****n’ great idea!’
“The turnaround was amazing,” he adds of the triumph which stopped Rangers winning ten-in-a-row. “It wasn’t that Henrik proved himself world-class or Paul Lambert came from winning the Champions League with Borussia Dortmund or I scored 15 goals from midfield – the determination of that dressing-room was like nothing I’ve ever known.
I’m not up to speed with the current Celtic but maybe, after what happened to the club last season, there’s the same realisation that’s what is needed now.
“If someone was shirking in our team, maybe if they’d failed to track back even just once, the rest of us would let them know. We weren’t satisfied with getting a decent wage and a pat on the back for straightforward wins at home most Saturdays. We were a bunch of guys who were really driven.
“Mind you, we had to be. We had no choice but to be absorbed in what we had to do: stop Rangers. In my day training was at Barrowfield and you got changed at the stadium. Every day there would be a group of supporters outside: ‘You lot better f****n’ do this.’ It never let up all week and on match-days if the result hadn’t been good we got it in the neck. Once, losing away to Aberdeen, there was still a bunch waiting for us four hours after the game had ended.
“As an Old Firm player you’ve got to be able to handle the noise. Either that or you’re dead. Paul McStay had retired and I got given the No 8 jersey. But who was I? There was no fanfare for me; I hadn’t come from Italy. And anytime I’d played for Scotland it was as a wing-back. So straight away I had everything to do.”
Mostly Burley did it well that season and he was the football scribes’ choice for Player of the Year. His best moment? Probably the January goal to help do down the old foes. “We’d lost the first derby of the season and Stubbsy [Alan Stubbs] had just managed to grab us a point in the second. We weren’t looking forward to playing Rangers again. It wasn’t fear but frustration from having played well but being denied by the brilliance of Andy Goram. That day Jackie McNamara supplied me with a peach of a pass. If that had been Lionel Messi and not this wee fella from Edinburgh we’d still be talking about that reverse ball. Goughie remembers it well. A couple of years ago he said: ‘I stepped out.’ The ball went behind him but Andy couldn’t get out to smother me.
“Afterwards Simon Donnelly’s dad said: ‘The Celtic fans will accept you now.’ If we lost a game that season we’d ask a member of staff to check if there were any grumpy fans waiting for us by the exit door. If we hadn’t won that one we might have had to camp out in the players’ lounge overnight.”
Presumably Burley won over that hard-to-please Jungle-ite who’d been unimpressed by his start in green and white? “Oh I don’t know about that. Probably when I went into punditry he began to hate me all over again!” Burley, when he first grabbed a mic, claims he didn’t set out to provoke. “I don’t see myself as controversial,” he insists. “I might say the odd silly thing but I don’t throw anything out there for effect. If you do that and you’re challenged how do you back up your argument? I just think I’m honest.”
Burley’s Uncle George is the former Scotland manager. “When he got the job folk thought it would compromise me but he was given the same treatment as Gordon Strachan, Craig Levein and Alex McLeish over poor performances – in fact he probably got it worse. I remember at George’s youngest son’s wedding his other boy saying: ‘We wondered when you would twist the knife.’ But he was okay about it. George had bigger problems than me giving him a bit of stick.”
He chuckles. Putting himself out there, believing that everyone’s entitled to his opinion – where did that come from? “It wasn’t in me at 16 when I was this skinny, spotty-faced kid so nervous about leaving Cumnock to sign for Chelsea. My American colleagues are surprised when I tell them what I was like back then. ‘You’ve made up for it since,’ they say.
“I was super-scared of London and I wanted to hold out for a Scottish club.” But dad Tom insisted: “You’re going.” As a £27-a-week YTS apprentice Burley cleaned boots, also loos – the old-school, character-forming duties not asked of the likes of young Stamford Bridge superstars like Mason Mount. And he lived off kebabs, or at least if the pre-Champions League-winning Chelsea had paid their bill at the outlet close to the stadium covering the youngsters’ £2 daily allowance.
“What would today’s nutritionists have said about that diet? But London was the making of me. For five years I lodged with a lovely couple, Ken and Yvonne Paterson, in Golders Green – terrific characters. They had a Jack Russell called Nipper which only had three legs and maybe not surprisingly was always angry. I can still see Ken with this plank of plywood trying to usher the thing into its kennel. At eight o’clock every night he’d say: ‘Do you hear that, Craig?’ ‘No, Ken,’ I’d reply. ‘That’s the sound of the bar opening.’ Then he’d get wired into the whisky which he always drank with milk. But at ten o’clock he’d go: ‘Right, Craig, off to bed.’ ‘I’m not tired, though.’ So he’d point at Yvonne: ‘You don’t want to hang around. This is when she turns wild.’
“They passed away a few years ago but I’ll always be grateful to them for looking after this painfully shy boy so well. Funnily enough, there was a lad from Auchenleck staying in the house for a while. Ken’s boss at the local council came from Logan, just outside Cumnock, and then who would move in to the next room but my school pal Billy Dodds.”
Burley wasn’t so far from home after all. Not – with the hurricanes, the bears and his disavowal of Old Firm excesses – like now.