I was asked to contribute a piece on John Guidetti to a German magazine last month. John was on his way to winning the European U21 Championships with Sweden, while being every inch the football personality. The German publisher wanted to know why Celtic, Stoke and Manchester City had decided against re-employing a striker with a flattering pedigree.
During last season it looked like John was destined for the English lower leagues, or perhaps one of the resting homes in Turkey, but a few weeks at a tournament later he’s won himself a five year deal with Celta de Vigo.
Guidetti is a better player than he looked at Celtic last season. We don’t play a system which lends itself to a classic, British style, penalty box striker, which is what John is, but would you give him a five year contract to play in La Liga? Of course not. You’ve watched the player way more than Celta’s scouts and you know better than they do.
This is the truism in scouting, people who watch a player week-in, week-out, know vastly more than a scout who only gets to see a month’s games, or a handful of games across the season, or worse, a selection of DVDs provided by the agent, or TV highlights.
What’s made John Guidetti is his outlier season, 2011-12, when on loan at Feyenoord he smacked home an astonishing 20 goals in 23 games. Without that season, the Celta scouts wouldn’t even know his name. Maybe the serious illness he subsequently suffered robbed him of his mojo, maybe he’s a pound or two heavier than his fighting weight, but my money’s on Vigo suffering buyers regret soon enough.
The best of luck to John in Galicia, but I suspect he’ll be available for loan this time next year.
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i took part in a send away a swab study, for my clan association.
in spite of having an english mother and grandfather, a dunoon granny, and an ulster proddy granny.
turns out we are vikings,
as the name and the heritage suggested,
hugely interesting subject.
SFTB
I do know that the Celts originated near the Danube but we’re forced North-west by the expansion of the Roman Empire.
Proudbhoy
It’s a fantastic song that’s really all about the lyrics.
http://youtu.be/35CBWwy98nc
The main man
Big Luke
http://youtu.be/ApnDEBQ138g
Not greatest singer but the lyrics in his tunes are spot on
http://youtu.be/3xVudb45Hac
for the Celtic fans who find themselves dragged to court tomorrow.
Keep the faith
St. Stiv’s
Take it up withProf Donnelly
Orkney’s a bit of an anomaly. Lots of Viking heritage there- not surprising. The rest of us are mongrels. As are the English (from whom we, apparently, differ) and the French and the Germans.
Don’t believe the blood and soil Wagnerian hype!
English press today valuing James McCarthy at £20m! Good player but crazy money, I wonder what Skoosh would have been valued at had he gone south?
http://youtu.be/IJv1enfeAdU
Your children’s futures in your hands
Brighten up your night,folks. I’m off to work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3LCz5CPadXc
Sftb
Surely shows the importance of culture rather than dna in defining nations’ / tribes’ / communities’ self perception?
Nae Wagner in my iTunes. Not the nazi type or the guy from X Factor neither.
;-)
HH jamesgang
HT
That’s a contentious theory
Germans or Celts?</a
Here's an extract if people don't want to read the whole thing:-
"The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.
Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.
Many myths about the Celts
Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else. Wales and Cornwall have received about 20 per cent, Scotland and its associated islands 30 per cent, while eastern and southern England, being nearer the continent, has received one third of its population from outside over the past 6,500 years. These estimates, set out in my book The Origins of the British, come from tracing individual male gene lines from continental Europe to the British Isles and dating each one (see box at bottom of page).
If the Celts were not our main aboriginal stock, how do we explain the wide historical distribution and influence of Celtic languages? There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement; even so, some people must have brought Celtic languages to our isles. So where did they come from, and when?
The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC."
67Heaven .. CHALLENGING THE LIE ..I am wee Oscar…… Ipox belongs to the creditors
22:33 on
12 July, 2015
Slightly off-topic to the general thrust of tonight’s main subject, but was just wondering if some of the PL critics actually contribute anything financially to Celtic ……. wouldn’t be surprised if not…..
Anyway, the team-building effort for this season is looking very good IMO….
Not according to that twat Mathew Lindsay in the Herald.That newspaper is on a crusade against Celtic.Dont know if its just him,but it is now seriously out of order.
If Celtic can ban other purported hacks,why they cannot tell this bitter ,twisted Hun he is no longer welcome at our press conferences is beyond me.
JokeA 90-year-old man goes to the doctor for his annual checkup. The doctor asks him how he is and he replies, “Great, I’m 90 years old, I have an 20 year old bride, and she’s pregnant with my child.”
The doctor looks at him for a second, “Let me tell you a story. A knew a man who loved to hunt. One day he went out and was in such a hurry he grabbed an umbrella instead of a gun. As soon as he got out there a bear jumped out of the woods at him. He grabbed his umbrella, pointed it at the bear, and squeezed the handle. You know what happened next?”
The old man, dumbfounded, replies, “No, what?”
“The bear dropped dead right there!”
The old man protests, “Someone else must have shot the bear!”
The doctor nods, “Exactly.”
HH
HAMILTONTIM
Good luck tomorrow,bud. To all involved.
WEETWEETWEET
Belter,mate. As usual.
james gang
People believe what they want to believe largely but culture is much more influential than DNA. How else do you explain the EDL leader being a guy from the Irish diaspora?
We’ve managed to keep most of the Nationalism debate away from “blood and soil” politics but vigilance is needed as it is a very persuasive Identity factor.
I’m proud to be a mongrel. Mongrel dugs are much cleverer than “pure” breeds. You won’t find much intelligence in a Royal Family bred via cousins through the generations according to the genetic myths of their time.
Parkheadcumsalford
Happy birthday.
http://youtu.be/h8ZAqxg__Rs
Could be one of those nights
SFTB
So because you put it in green you thought it more believable :-)
Yes, there are plenty of theories but I’ve read enough to content myself with my initial post. There’s almost no evidence , except what the Irish subsequently brought, that the Celts ever actually came to Scotland.
While it’s still the 12th
A wee apprentice boy song
HT
I have no idea how it turned up green.
However, the genetic purity (even majority genes) theories have not borne much scrutiny.
I remain proud to be a mongrel.
Sftb
Agree 100%
I’d love to know my dna background though I fear culturally I’m very boringly Scottish for many centuries back.
I love the mix of life that the world can offer.
Night. First day back to work tomorrow.
HH jamesgang
http://youtu.be/n-y2ox2HPnc
Shane knows the Craic
sftb,
who claimed to be some sort of genetic pure persons
doesn’t take much to say everybody’s ancients were migrants/
imean that’s how the world got populated.
http://youtu.be/q97IfBOIR5Q
Night y’all
Helen Sweeney RIP.
‘Ach, everybody knows Catholics don’t tell lies’ JOCK STEIN… http://www.cqnmagazine.com/?p=6313
St. Stiv’s
“who claimed to be some sort of genetic pure persons ”
Sorry, I think it might be you, this time, who has to make your point clearer.
You just cried “rubbish” at my claim that we (all of us- not you specifically) are nowhere near as pure genetically as many like to claim.
My line remains consistent. Despite having two Irish parents, I am happy to be a mongrel in the longer timeline. I am not much different from the guys and girls across the Tweed.
SFTB
I’ve posted previously that my ‘natural’ background is unknown to me. It doesn’t alter who I am or what I feel.
Ethnicity is who you believe you are. In my opinion anyway.
turkeybhoy
23:26 on 12 July, 2015
ABSOLUTELY…… we should be banning a few of these bigoted bhun journalists / rags (and I mean ‘RAGS’ ….
hamiltontim
23:49 on 12 July, 2015
Apparently, my family moved to Ireland from France….your right, there is only one ethnicity for me ….TIM …….HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
sftb,
would you adam and eve it.
everybody came fro, afika. in a move,ent of ja peepel
anyways, i enjoyed that jamie j person on t in the park, and his zombie song.
SFTBs
Ireland, especially in the Pale has many nationalities. The thing is they are all Irish and accepted.
There is no talk here about mongrels.
ps,
would be particularly daft anyone claiming to be a celt descendent , from maybe 5000 bc
when its easier to be a gael, form 800 years ago,
Clogher
We tend to be very good at assimilation
bloody dna and genetics, and genealogy and all that stuff,
normans vikings saxons , angles, crashed up armada ships, flemish trade, flanders,
druids, britons (for real with no bonfires)
nope
not one
no evidence
never one was a handsome hun
WITs,
I watched the Sunday Game there. I am sure that Stephen Cluxton read from a pre-typed speech at the end of the match.
Anyway, fair play to the Dubs.
Clogher
Dublin were poor today
Tougher challenge ahead