The King of Kings will take a lot of emulating if he is to have his crown taken off him as Celtic’s de juro best player of all time.
Many have been and gone since his departure in 2004, with the Swede’s exploits yet to be remotely matched even by good strikers such as Odsonne Edouard, Moussa Dembele and Gary Hooper.
But with Kyogo Furuhashi starting to exert his brilliance on the Scottish game, there is cause for concern – particularly from the blue half of the city.
And former theRangers legend Brian Laudrup believes Kyogo’s arrival is very much like Larsson’s – especially with the timing of Wim Jansen and Ange Postecoglou coming in to dispel the title win by theRangers the season prior.
“I almost feel like I am watching the remake of an old film”, Laudrup wrote in the Daily Mail.
“But not one that I enjoyed. For me, the original was a particularly painful thing.
“The plot lines are certainly similar. A manager arrives from Japan to take charge of Celtic in a surprising appointment, deals with a rocky start, signs a game-changing striker and wins the League Cup.
“So far, Ange Postecoglou has pretty much mirrored the impact Wim Jansen made in the 1997-98 season. The parallels are there. As is the warning from history to Rangers.
“Of course, the job for Giovanni van Bronckhorst is to ensure a different ending to this particular story than the one endured by the Ibrox team I played in, when Jansen’s side stopped us winning ten in a row.”
“Furuhashi has been an outstanding addition by Postecoglou and is example of how personal knowledge of a player like Jansen and Larsson given their Feyenoord connection can make a huge difference to a manager’s aims at a new club.
“Larsson wasn’t yet a real star name when he first came to Celtic. Glasgow was where his reputation was truly made. Now, in European football at least, Furuhashi is raising his own profile to a whole new level. He is such an intelligent player. The timing of his runs is exemplary.”
