Henrik Larsson has revealed that stopping 10-in-a-row was one of the highlights of his Celtic career.
The Swede was signed by Wim Jansen in 1997 for £650,000 at the same time as Dave Murray was paying out £4m a pop to sign Marco Negri, Lorenzo Amoruso and Sergio Porrini from Serie A.
After losing the first two matches of the season, against Hibs and Dunfermline, it was only a matter of time before the 10-in-a-row souvenirs were on the streets of Glasgow.
Richard Gough returned to score the only goal of the game in the first Glasgow derby as Walter Smith’s side shrugged aside their annual European embarrassment to assume control of the Scottish title race.
Somehow Celtic battled their way back into contention despite having half the wage bill of their Ibrox competitors with all of the Celtic employees paying in full their bills to Inland Revenue.
On the final day of the season Celtic needed a win to clinch the title. Larsson opened the scoring early against St Johnstone but it wasn’t until the 72nd minute that the fans could celebrate when Harald Brattbakk notched the second goal.
Asked by 442 magazine for the highlight of his Celtic days the King of Kings said: “There are so many! The day that we stopped Rangers winning 10 titles in a row, the day that we secured the Treble and the day we reached the UEFA Cup final.
“I’ve probably missed about 50 others. I didn’t know much about Celtic when I arrived; about seven of us joined at the same time and we didn’t really understand the pressure.
“We came into a situation where we had to stop Rangers from winning 10 straight titles – they’d have been the first team to do it. We didn’t understand all of that, which was why we managed to keep our heads.
“If we’d been there longer and known we had to stop Rangers from winning 10 in a row, it would have been much more difficult.”
Despite Wim Jansen leaving shortly after the title win Larsson stayed at Celtic for seven years scoring a total of 242 goals.
