Teenage Livi star turned down big-money move to Parma and signed for Dundee instead

If things had turned out differently, Leigh Griffiths could have been rubbing shoulders with Hernan Crespo, Christian Panucci and Valeri Bojinov in Serie A as a teenager.

The Celtic striker had the opportunity to join Serie A side Parma when still a teenager, a move which would have seen him go from a couple of hundred pounds a week at Livingston to €10,000-a-week in Emilia-romagna.

Griffiths revealed to Si Ferry on his Open Goal Youtube show that he, alongside former team-mates Andy Halliday and Joe Mckee were sent to Italy to train with Parma.

It was at a time when Livingston

were run by Angelo Massone, who “drove the West Lothian club to the brink of extinction in 2009”.

While Griffiths impressed Parma, the player himself was far from impressed with what he witnessed.

“The Italians and that came in, didn’t they? They were crazy. Me, Andy Halliday and Joe Mckee were sent over to

Parma for a week,” he said. “Training with the reserves, a bounce game, I had scored three. We came back and they said we want to sell you to Parma, you’re going to be on €10,000-a-week.

“The three of us couldn’t do anything. Went to training, came back and that was us, stuck in our room, stuck on our phones, 17, 18-year-olds. So boring. I didn’t care how much money I’m being offered here, I’m not going. I ended up signing for Dundee that summer.”

Before that there was another near miss, as Tony Mowbray showed interest at a West Brom side who had been promoted to the Premier League.

“I went down to West Brom and I trained with their first team. They came up and signed [Graham] Dorrans on a pre-contract. For a week I went down. I thought I had done alright, but by that time they were in the Prem. Tony Mowbray said you’re not the kind of striker ‘who is going to come in and bag 20 goals a season’.

“I was like ‘aye I will’. But it is one of those things that has probably worked out for the best.”