Giorgos Giakoumakis has certainly made a huge success of his move from Celtic to Atlanta United where he was recently voted the MLS Newcomer of the Season after scoring 17 goals for this new club, beating none other that Lionel Messi to that particular accolade.
Yet in an interview with The Athletic, the Greek international striker, still has Celtic on his mind and believes he was forced out of the club after failing to shift Kyogo as the main striker under Ange Postecoglou.
“I wouldn’t think to leave Celtic if several things didn’t go wrong, and many of them were completely wrong,” Giakoumakis said. “I cannot lie. My relationship with the manager wasn’t great, at the end of the day.
“We never had a specific fight, but he didn’t trust me as much as I wanted to feel trusted.
“I had to go. I had to go. I never regretted a moment. I was sad that I had to leave Celtic. I was living a life there. I was like a god for the fans,” the former Celtic striker said.
“My connection with them was really special, and it was sad, but I had to make my decision. My last month in Celtic I was suffering because of some people at the club. I didn’t receive the respect from the people or from the club. So actually, I think they forced me to go out.”
Giakoumakis was indeed a very popular figure among the Celtic support and also more importantly a top striker. However so too is Kyogo and he was the first pick under Ange Postecoglou and indeed subsequently under Brendan Rodgers.
That was obviously a frustration but Ange always made it clear that it wasn’t his job to keep players happy and that he’d always pack the best team possible to give him the best chance of winning the game.
Giakoumakis was also out injured in his early months at the club – didn’t he get hurt in the warm up after he got himself fit and we were all thinking we’d signed another Derk Boerrigter from Holland. But that wasn’t the case and Giakoumakis certainly proved his worth and won the hearts of the Celtic support.
Giakoumakis may well have been scouted by Celtic whereas Kyogo was signed on the instruction of Ange Postecoglou who talked about being certain that the former Vissel Kobe striker would be a huge success at Celtic. That was a crucial call from Postecoglou who was coming into European football with plenty to prove and you can’t say that he’s done too badly.
In the early 1980s Celtic had three strikers – Frank McGarvey, Charlie Nicholas and George McCluskey and Billy McNeill had a job on his hands keeping all three happy, sometimes all three would play.
The same thing happened two decades later under Martin O’Neill when he had Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton and John Hartson and often big Sutton would be moved to midfield or centre half to accommodate the other two.
Move on another two decades and Celtic were playing with just one striker and frustratingly for Giorgos Giakoumakis he seldom was going to be selected ahead of a fit Kyogo meaning that a move was inevitable.
Postecoglou was never going to keep an unhappy player and the Greek striker was undoubtedly a frustrated figure having plenty of confidence in the job he could do for Celtic if he was given the nod. That was not going to happen unless Kyogo got injured so annoyingly that was that.
