Goodbye To A Great Buy

Johan Mjallby was brought to the club by Jozef Venglos in 1998 and slotted seamlessly into the new team created by Martin O’Neill when the Irishman arrive

AS Celtic prepared for the 2004 Scottish Cup final against Dunfermline - and the impending departure of Henrik Larsson – the Magnificent Seven’s fellow Swede, Johan Mjallby was stuck in Limbo.

As he spoke to the Celtic View for their May 19 edition, the defender didn’t know if that would be his last interview for the club magazine as a Celtic player.

It was that time of the year as the season came to a close, and it was odds on that Larsson wouldn’t be the only Celt parting company with the club that summer.

The Hoops had just beaten Dundee United 2-1 in Larsson’s last competitive game as a Celt at Paradise, and the tears flowed from the striker who scored both goals in the win as final farewell to the fans that worshiped him.

There was, of course, the cup final still to come, and there was Henrik’s Farewell Fiesta against Seville to round off the King of Kings’ Hoops career.

Celtic lifted the Scottish Cup with a 3-1 win over Dunfermline, with you-know-who getting two of the goals, but Mjallby was on the bench.

His next interview for the View was in September of that year, but he was with Levante in Spain by that time with the prospect of facing Larsson who was now wearing the colours of Barcelona.

Mjallby had played 199 games for Celtic, like Brian McClair, just falling short of that 200 milestone, and had scored 15 goals.

He did, of course, return to the club as assistant manager under his old team-mate, Neil Lennon, between 2010 and 2014 and helped write more chapters in the club’s history.

Those new chapters were still in the future, though, as we revisit that May 19, 2004 Celtic View interview when Johan Mjallby’s immediate career was still undecided