Mark Viduka has finally given his side of events relating to Celtic’s 3-1 Scottish Cup defeat from Inverness Caley Thistle.
That game turned out to be John Barnes’ last match in charge with Director of Football Kenny Dalglish in charge of the team that faced Dundee three days later at Dens Park.
Celtic were trailing 2-1 at half-time to the Championship side with Viduka replaced by Ian Wright when the teams emerged for the second half.
Almost instantly supporters suspected that something out of the ordinary had happened in the dressing room, in the days that followed there was plenty of speculation with claims that boots and punches had been thrown in the home dressing room.
Viduka has barely said a word about his time with Celtic but today The Sun picked up on an interview given to an Australian magazine with the striker saying:
What happened? That’s a big one actually! It’s a difficult one to explain because there was a lot going on.
We were struggling in terms of what was happening on the pitch. At the time I was top scorer at the club and we went into that game I think we lost two goals in the first half, although I don’t actually remember it too well because I have tried to rub it out of my memory bank!
So it was very frustrating and even before that game we were conceding a lot of goals and for a club like Celtic that shouldn’t have been happening. To be honest I was a little bit upset about that because we kept conceding goals. We were playing against Caley Thistle, who were a second division club and we had already conceded two goals.
So what happened was I walked in at half time and the assistant coach sort of questioned me. He basically said ‘what’s up big fella, do you not fancy it today?’ And something in my head just clicked because that’s the type of guy I am and I just lost it.
I said to him ‘If I’m not good enough to play, then put someone else on.’ That was basically what I said to him and there was a big fight and a big argument and there were other players who got involved.
He questioned my commitment and at the time I felt, I was doing my best. In games before that, I would be scoring goals, but we would still be losing games and in this one game he comes in and he questioned my commitment to the team.
People think I had a bust-up with John Barnes. But I have nothing but good things to say about John Barnes. I loved his training sessions and he was a good bloke.
But I’ve got a bit of pride about me and when somebody questions my commitment in that type of way by suggesting that I didn’t want to play or something like that. So I said to John Barnes that if I wasn’t good enough to play, put somebody else on to play. And that was that.
Viduka claimed that he couldn’t remember whether or not he had thrown his boots at Black.
Celtic won 3-0 away to Dundee in Dalglish’s first match in charge with Viduka, playing alongside Wright scoring the second goal.
