AS a youngster, Emil Forsberg would watch legendary Swedish striker Henrik Larsson banging in the goals at Celtic Park, and now the RB Leipzig man wants to follow in the footsteps of one of his childhood heroes by finding the net in Glasgow next Tuesday.
A love of Larsson though isn’t the only think linking Forsberg, who has been capped 76 times for Sweden, with Celtic. He is also friends with Mikael Lustig, who enjoyed seven successful years at the club before moving onto Gent in 2019.
He is hoping though that RB Leipzig can sicken both of his friends with Celtic connections when they travel to Scotland next week, and if he can find the net, all the better.
“Well let’s hope so,” Forsberg said. “It would be amazing to do that. So let’s see if it happens.
“I know very well of Henrik. I know that he is a legend at Celtic. We grew up as youngsters watching him play, most of all scoring many goals for Celtic.
“I’m also a good friend of Mikael. I played with him in the national team for almost eight years. So we have a good tradition of Swedes doing well at Celtic. And it makes me proud to see them do so well.
“I expect a fantastic match played in a fantastic atmosphere. It’s going to be amazing to play at Celtic Park and a lot of fun.
“It’s another important match for us, but I think we are making good steps now every day and we have a lot of quality and intensity. I think we are on the right path now.
“I think recently we have played a lot of good games. I think the only one when we did not was against Borussia Monchengladbach when we did not perform as well as we could.
“But I think since then we have played well, we are developing really good and we are also getting to know Marco (Rose) really well, how he wants to play.
“So I think it is feeling and looking really good at the moment for us.”
Despite Leipzig’s 3-1 win over Celtic in Germany on Wednesday night, attacking midfielder Forsberg isn’t taking anything for granted ahead of the return match next Tuesday, admitting that Ange Postecoglou’s team posed them huge problems on their own patch.
“We were prepared because we know that Celtic are a fantastic team,” he said.
“They play really good football and have a lot of good solutions and playing style when they have the ball.
“It was a high intensity game because both teams didn’t just want to play football, but they wanted to play fast football.
“Of course I was impressed with them, but I was not surprised about it because I knew about the quality that Celtic has within their squad.
“There was high tempo, a lot of quality on the pitch and chances in both directions.
“I think Celtic played a really good first-half. They tried to play football and they were good. They had a lot of situations and good chances as well as we did, so I think it was a joy to watch for everybody.
“Even though Celtic managed to score to make it 1-1 at the start, we managed to keep our intensity in the second half and, in the end, we brought home the three points that were really important for us as a group.”
