Plain silly to place Furuhashi in the same bracket as icon Larsson

KUDOS to Martin O’Neill for keeping a straight face when a broadcaster asked him to draw comparisons between Kyogo Furuhashi and Henrik Larsson. No harm to Furuhashi (right). In a league where the general standard is as low as it’s been for some time, he’s a stand-out footballer. As things stand, he might even be the best of the lot. Sitting on 29 goals for the campaign, he’ll hit 30-plus before the season’s end and could even reach that figure against Rangers tomorrow. He offers speed, positioning and finishing other strikers in the league can’t match. He has, however, yet to score a goal in the Champions League. And Japan boss Hajime Moriyasu needs a little more convincing that he deserves a place in his international squad, never mind his starting XI. In contrast, Larsson won four Scottish league titles, two Scottish Cups, two League Cups and almost won a UEFA Cup final for Celtic singlehanded. He moved to Barcelona and won two La Liga titles and came off the bench to transform a Champions League final. For his swansong, he moved to Manchester United and won the league there as well. This after 106 caps for Sweden and a thirdplace finish in the 1994 World Cup Finals. Larsson’s former manager in Glasgow, O’Neill says it’s ‘difficult’ to draw comparisons between the two players. Difficult and, it should be said, ridiculously premature. If people want to have a conversation about Furuhashi’s value to this Celtic team, it’s a free country. If they want to place him in the same bracket as one of the club’s top three goalscorers of all time (left), they’re just being silly.