‘Sh*tty surfaces, ‘Celtic star blasts Hamilton and Kilmarnock’s pitches

MIKAEL LUSTIG has spoken out against the articifical surfaces at Kilmarnock and Hamilton and reckons that Scottish football needs to firm up on its rule book to prevent any further matches being played on long grass.

Craig Levein tried to pull that trick for last Sunday’s visit from the Champions. He left the Tynecastle grass long and didn’t water the pitch in order to slow the game down and make it as difficult for Celtic as possible. It didn’t work as Celtic ran out 3-1 winners but Brendan Rodgers spoke up about the state of the pitch – was was clearly a tactical decision by Levein – both before and then afterwards.

Even with the three points secured Brendan still wanted to emphasise the point that that kind of thing is bad for the overall game in Scotland.

Now one of his senior player, who is heading to the World Cup with Sweden in the summer, has backed up his manager and has taken the debate to the next stage by bringing the subject round to the ‘shitty’ artificial surfaces at Hamilton and Kilmarnock.

Mikael Lustig reckons Scottish football needs to sort out these issues if we are to develop players and maybe get Scotland to a major tournament for the first time this century.

“Teams try to do everything to get points off us but I just hope Scottish football can see things and make some rules,” Lustig stated.

“If Scotland want to make good players and qualify for big tournaments, they need players who can play football.

“Not ones who just play on a shitty pitch to try and get a point.

“There’s a rule for the Champions League about how long the grass has to be. They don’t have it in Scotland but maybe it’s something they should look at.

“We want to show the Scottish league has good footballers. But if we’re going to have pitches like that it looks dumb.

“There should be a rule about the height of grass, absolutely. I understand some clubs have astroturf pitches because they don’t have the money to spend.

“But I’m from Sweden and I’ve played on a lot of different astroturf. Some of them are good and some of them are shit.

“Hamilton’s and Kilmarnock’s are shit.”