The party’s over for birthday Bhoy Leigh
LEIGH GrIffItHs turned 30 on thursday. On recent evidence, he no doubt marked the occasion by asking the neighbourhood round for a party and polishing off the cake.
for any footballer, the big threezero is a grim day. People start to look for that lost yard of pace. Never allowed to have a bad game, every slip from the old guy is a sign of irreversible decline.
for Griffiths, the scrutiny is intensified by other issues. One is his mental health, the other an inability to learn from some terrible decisions.
Granted time off from football to seek help with his demons in 2018, the striker returned to Celtic’s first team and, in their final game before Boris Johnson shut down the country, claimed a hat-trick in a 5-0 rout of st Mirren. the lockdown was bad timing for everyone. for Griffiths, it was disastrous.
Players were packed off into quarantine with individual fitness programmes. they were trusted to stick to them. some dealt with the responsibility better than others. scott Brown returned for pre-season training in peak condition. the former scotland striker, meanwhile, came back overweight and out of shape.
Ordered to train alone, Celtic have now been forced to investigate claims he threw a party for his girlfriend in breach of Covid-19 rules. As this column has said before, football clubs can plan for most things. they can’t legislate for the stupidity of footballers.
Griffiths has spoken of his issues with depression and that’s a condition his manager can relate to better than most. Yet the patience and understanding of Neil Lennon has its limits. the Celtic boss has already criticised the striker’s ‘social-media nonsense’ and warned him to stop letting team-mates down.
At a time when Celtic should be seeing the fruits of some serious hard work, all they get instead is another headline to douse.
On tuesday, they thrashed Kr reykjavik 6-0 in a Champions League qualifier. reported to have another calf problem, Griffiths was nowhere to be seen. Odsonne Edouard scored a fine goal before making way for substitutes Albian Ajeti and Patryk Klimala.
Nobody really knows yet how either of the two new Bhoys will shape up in green and white. the club’s record for signing strikers doesn’t inspire confidence and that only makes the lack of professionalism from a senior pro even harder to forgive.
Before signing Griffiths, Lennon asked an old pal for his opinion. During his own time at Parkhead, Jim Melrose found a Celtic jersey a heavy burden.
In Griffiths, he saw a player who would never overthink things the way he did. the issues arise when he leaves the club and does things which suggest he doesn’t think
nearly enough. some are clearly better at keeping their eye on the ball than others. Barcelona’s humiliating Champions League defeat to Bayern Munich saw a half-time video emerge online of a disconsolate bearded figure slumped on a dressing-room bench.
Lionel Messi is 33 now. He has money, awards and nothing left to prove to anyone. time is running out and he could play out his days at Barcelona in splendid wealth.
But football is a brief career and there’s a reason the Argentine is one of the all-time greats. If Barcelona are prepared to settle for what passes for mediocrity at the Nou Camp — and it’s all relative — then he’ll leave. the drive for self-improvement is relentless.
In January 2018, Celtic had the chance to sell Griffiths to sporting Kansas City and, given all that’s happened since, Peter Lawwell must wish he’d taken the £5million.
If he had, he might not have had to pay the same sum to West Ham to secure Ajeti. the swiss striker hasn’t arrived in Glasgow to be the understudy to a 30-year-old. right now, he looks like his replacement.
Listen, Griffiths might feel he’s seen off a few pretenders down the years. And if he has any sense left he’ll have spent his 30th birthday in a socially-distanced room plotting how to do it all over again.
Not for the first time, the career of Leigh Griffiths is at a crossroads.
One more wrong turn and future birthdays will be spent peering into the rear-view mirror of a taxi convincing the passenger in the back he really that guy who scored two free-kicks against England.