The King Of The Dead Ball

For an all-too brief period of time, from 2005 – 2009, Celtic Park played host to a footballing legend, who was, whilst at Paradise, the greatest player of his kind anywhere in the world.

We didn’t know it when we signed him, but he proved it over and over again with the most extraordinary dead-ball skills I’ve ever seen as a Celtic fan.

Watching him was a pleasure.

Teams all over Europe feared playing against him.

He scored title winning goals, goals against Rangers, hat-tricks and show-stoppers on the biggest stage of all, the Champions League.

When I think about “impact players” he is the one that comes most to mind.

Shunsuke Nakamura is one of my footballing icons.

His signing still amazes me.

It was the last time, in my view, that we were adventurous and ambitious and went after a player who was being courted by top, top teams, and made his signing a priority.

We got him from Italy, from Reginna, for a sum of just over £2.5 million.

The ubiquitous YouTube footage showed a player of sublime skill and grace, with a deft touch and a footballing imagination that could leave opponents dead.

Those of us who viewed those scenes hoped that, for once, what we were seeing was an accurate representation of the footballer we would be getting.

In point of fact, it undersold him.

We were getting a genius.

The closest contemporary of his that I can think of was Lubo Moravcik, whose ability was almost unbelievable in a player few in Scotland had ever heard of.

Naka arrived with less experience than the Slovakian, and with more years left in him, but he brought a similar bag of tricks and flicks and feints.

He also brought something that we’d seen Lubo do but never with his consistency.

He brought a swaggering, staggering ability with the dead ball.

Everyone who loves football has seen his tricks in that regard, like putting the ball through the window of a moving bus, or knocking the little figures off the top of a wedding cake.

His accuracy with the ball is astonishing, like a sniper shooting at a target.

But you had to see him in competitive football to truly understand what he had.

Naka scored 34 goals for Celtic in his time with our club, which is impressive enough when you consider that he was an attacking midfielder and not a forward.

Yet it’s the number of them that were free kicks, shots that he rocketed in from all sorts of acute angles, which really takes your breath away.

A number of them stand out for all time, such as the one he scored at Old Trafford in the Champions League, the one that won the title at Rugby Park, at an angle and distance I would have said was impossible for any player to score from and, of course, the one at Celtic Park against Manchester United and which UEFA voted as one of the finest goals in the competition.

For a while there, I have little doubt that the finest free kick taker in the world was plying his trade in Glasgow.

When I’ve said this to people over the years I’ve had a mixture of different responses, everything from head shaking to vigorous nodding in agreement.

People have mentioned Juninho (not the one who played for us), and whilst he could hit a ball alright I never saw him do it in the last minute of a league deciding game, from the right hand side of the pitch, well outside the penalty area with a shot that curved and looped and ended up in the back corner of the net.

Others even dispute that he’s the best free kick taker Celtic has had in recent years.

Some say that was Maloney.

Others have said Lubo himself, who’s free kick winner against Motherwell, on a dreich midweek evening at Celtic Park, when Andy Goram had saved everything that came near him (his reaction to that goal is priceless) is one of my favourite goals of all time …

But Naka did this kind of thing again and again and again.

That night at Parkhead, against Manchester United in the Champions League, when the odds could not have been higher or the moment more tense, he stepped up with about as much on his shoulders as any Celtic player in Europe ever has, and he never wavered for one second.

His confidence in his ability, his composure under the lights, was astonishing.

That goal is one of the highlights of my life as a football fan.

The other goal I remember most is the one against Rangers, at Parkhead, on another crucial night, one which proved the fulcrum of a whole season.

We needed the three points that night, we needed them about as badly as we’ve ever needed a win.

It was 16 April 2008, the night Nakamura changed the course of history.

We went into that game four points behind the Ibrox club, who also had two games in hand.

Defeat would have all but given them the title.

A win for Celtic didn’t guarantee us anything, but we knew they’d be sweating it, particularly as they had to play us again eleven days later, at the same venue.

Naka had never scored against them until that night.

When he picked the ball up 30 yards from the goal, in the 20th minute, I think most of us were expecting one of his searing through balls, or deft little chips out wide.

What none of us saw coming was the cut inside two men, a steady stride towards goal and the unleashing of a shot so sweet I’ve watched it a hundred times and still cannot get over the sheer perfection of it.

Looking at it side on, a beautiful dipping, swerving scorcher from distance is one thing.

To see it from behind, as the ball rises, bends one way and then curves in the other to destroy any hope the Rangers keeper has of getting near it (two goalkeepers wouldn’t have stood a chance) is something else entirely.

It is one of the finest goals ever scored at Celtic Park.

Later in the same game, he unleashed another scorcher from outside the box, which had Allan McGregor completely beaten, only to see his shot palmed away by the defender Carlos Cueller.

The Spaniard was red-carded, and Scott McDonald stepped up to take the penalty, but McGregor was equal to the task and beat it away.

Yet Naka had still changed the game.

When McDonald headed the ball across goal in the final seconds of the match there was no Rangers defender marking big Vennegoor of Hesselink, who nodded it into the net for the winner, and delivered a psychological hammer blow against Walter Smith’s Rangers team.

From that night on, they never recovered.

They stumbled, and fell, all the way to the line, whilst we motored onward and pipped them on the last day.

Naka left Celtic Park at the end of his four year deal, and was seemingly bound for a move back to Japan, only to end up in Spain, where things didn’t work out so well for him.

He returned to his native land in 2010, and still plays there today, for Yokohama.

He returned to Celtic Park, briefly, in December last year, to take a bow at half time in the match against St Mirren, and he was given the welcome that heroes of the Hoops always enjoy.

I loved watching the little man from Japan.

He had everything a football fan wants to see.

He was sheer entertainment.

What sums him up best was the reaction of Daryl King when he scored a free-kick winner against St Mirren, one the clapped out hack didn’t think we should have got.

He went on to say that giving Celtic a free kick whilst Nakamura was on the pitch was the same as giving us a penalty.

Indeed, the fear was palpable every time he stepped up for one.

That day at Rugby Park, with a minute to go, I think we were all waiting, expecting, him to do the business although it looked absolutely impossible.

And he duly did.

He didn’t let us down, then or ever in a Celtic shirt.

We were lucky, we were damned lucky, to have him.