SCOTT BROWN has discussed his battles in the midfield with Hearts’ Steven Naismith. The pair always share a tough tackle when Celtic and Hearts compete on the pitch and Brown was discussing their Scotland careers with Norwich’s Grant Hanley on Youtube. However, the subject of the pair’s Scotland teammate, Steven Naismith, came up and Brown revealed that he relishes the battle with Naismith.
“Even playing against Naisy now, I just laugh because I moan a lot right, but Naisy is non-stop. During training, during games, anything. He’d moan that black is white and white is black.
“The two of us are getting deeper and deeper so Naisy has gone from a striker to a no.10 so the two of us are somehow marking each other and it’s literally non-stop the whole game. It’s ‘I’m coming for you’ or he’s coming for me.
“To be fair, it’s good because you know after the game straight away you shake hands and offski, but for 90 minutes we kick and moan at each other.
“We went and played in a golf competition together and the two of us were in the same team and all that so it’s good to have that competition.”
Brown also discussed his toughest opponent in a Scotland jersey, Nicolas Anelka. The Celtic captain came up against Anelka in Scotland’s win at the Parc des Princes in September 2007. Scotland won 1-0 thanks to James McFadden; however, Brown remembered the game for having to double up with ex-Rangers right-back Alan Hutton due to having to play against the ex-Arsenal and Chelsea attacker.
“I would go back to when we beat France over in France. I played right midfield and ended up playing right back. Faddy scored that wonder goal but I played right mid and Hutton played right back but literally me and Hutts touched each other all night we were that close to each other.
“It was Malouda at left back and Anelka left wing and see as soon as Anelka got the ball, the directness of that guy, the pace, his sharpness, he was literally taking the two of us out of the game every time. He was skipping past one of us, going into the other. But we dug deep.
“He’s a proper athlete and back then I was an absolute dog as well, I could chase anything but Anelka was a different breed and to play against him and say we won the game is fantastic but we didn’t get a lot of the ball.”
