Saidy Janko has an interesting reason why he didn’t make it at Celtic

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Okay, you can probably tell it’s an international break without Celtic when we start talking about Saidy Janko.

Nothing against the Gambia international but he’s hardly someone the Celtic support thinks about too often.

Janko effectively played one season on our books under Ronny Deila. He did also play a small role at the start of the ‘Invincible’ campaign under Brendan Rodgers before his game-time opportunities dried up.

It never really worked out for him in Glasgow. One abiding memory the Celtic support are likely to have was the night we crept through to the UEFA Champions League group stage against Hapoel Be’er Sheva.

Janko gave away an early penalty that night, then gifted the hosts a goal when he collided with Craig Gordon. Regardless, he has another interesting reason featuring a team-mate for why he didn’t make it at the club.

“I was thrilled because Celtic are also a massive club throughout Europe and across the world,” he said in a fresh interview with World Football Index.

“I relished the new challenge in Scottish football. However, I did not manage to play as many games as I would have liked to because just as I had broken into the team, I suffered an injury in training from a tackle by Emilio Izaguirre.

“That kept me out of action for a long time and halted my progress. Despite that, Celtic was a good learning curve for me and I played my last game against Hapoel Ber Sheva as the club qualified for the Champions League under Brendan Rodgers.”

So a Lennoxtown tackle from Izaguirre is to blame for Janko not quite making the cut in Scotland. It does just go to show that accidents do happen in training.

To be fair to Janko, who was born in Switzerland and played for their international youth teams, he has gone on to play for some decent clubs since his Hoops stint.

He left us for Saint-Étienne before earning a move to Porto. He’s also played for Nottingham Forest and signed for Champions League side Young Boys permanently this summer after playing for them on loan a few years ago.

He seems a pretty decent guy. It just didn’t quite work out for him at Celtic.

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