Kieran Tierney had the Celtic support on his mind at his Real Sociedad unveiling.
The Scotland defender has joined the Basque outfit on a season-long loan from Arsenal. Tierney is living the dream in La Liga and will have a keen eye on Thursday’s Champions League draw with his new side involved. La Real can’t, however, draw Celtic as we’re both in pot four.
The ex-Hoops star was unveiled at his first press conference on Wednesday, shown with a Spanish translation on the Sociedad YouTube channel.
When asked what he knew about his Real Sociedad, he couldn’t help but fall back on some knowledge from his Celtic days.
“I don’t know many things yet but there are similarities between Scotland and the Basque country,” he said.
“If you know a little about the team I played for before, Celtic, there were often ikurriñas [the Basque flag] at these games so there are some similarities between my old team and this.”
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When asked earlier how his name is pronounced, he smiled and said: “You can pronounce it Kieran Tierney or, for short, KT.”
Tierney has taken a big step into the unknown by moving to the La Liga side. The extent of that unknown was shown in the press conference which saw him wear a headset in order for questions to be translated in to English.
That language barrier may be an issue to begin with but real progress often only comes from going out of your comfort zone. A number of Scottish players have benefited from doing that in Italy in recent times.
Tierney has a higher ceiling than the likes of Aaron Hickey and Lewis Ferguson so it will be fascinating to see how he gets on in a top domestic division and the Champions League.
We wish him all of the best.
In other news, all eyes on a left-back as exciting late Celtic transfer plans are spelled out