Celtic fans didn’t dislike Berkovic for his nationality. It was because he was a lazy waste of space.

I’m always amused when someone who flopped at our club decides to use it as a punching bag just to get his name in the paper.

Amusement is definitely there in the range of feelings I have towards Eyal Berkovic in light of his recent, deranged, media interview, in which he accused Celtic fans, Scots, and the Irish of being hate-filled.

I read the interview, and “delusional” is the kindest word I can use to describe it. And honestly, I don’t feel like being kind. But if he wants to talk about hate, we can have that conversation. I’m happy to have it.

The newspapers running this interview have described him as a media personality. Well, that’s true—true to an extent. But have they actually looked at his media career? Because it’s all available online, and I did have a good look at it.

Some of it involves maniacal ranting about Arabs. Some of it involves insane allegations against members of the Knesset. He and his co-anchor also conducted a blatantly discriminatory interview with a trans model in Israel.

And in the interview itself—the one making headlines—he makes a bizarre reference to Robbie Keane’s family being targeted by persons unknown, for reasons unspecified, because he was managing in Israel, something that exists only in his imagination, like a lot of the other stuff he was raving about.

He’s got basic facts wrong. He invented others out of whole cloth. I mean, it’s difficult to know where to even start, except to speculate that perhaps the kick in the head John Hartson famously gave him might have messed with his brain somewhere along the line.

I find it amazing that someone who talks about how hateful Scots and the Irish are seems to have an awful lot of hate himself… for Scots and the Irish.

Maybe that kick did erase some IQ points. He certainly doesn’t sound like someone playing with a full deck of cards.

My podcasting colleague Eric Knott from Read Celtic tackled this subject yesterday, but it’s worth going over again in light of some of the ridiculous things in that interview.

In fact, it’s a timely reminder that I need to do a piece on the Celtic fans’ banner at the Champions League game. I had fully intended to, but it’s one of those things that got away from me in the day-to-day. This nonsense gives me a good reason to revisit the subject properly.

Whatever Berkovic thinks of us and whatever he reckons we thought of him, he’s completely misrepresenting it. I don’t deny that Celtic fans couldn’t stand the sight of him after a while. But that’s because he was one of the laziest, most non-trying footballers I’ve ever seen stealing a wage in a Celtic shirt.

He recently took down all his social media pictures from his time at Celtic. And that’s supposed to what—send a message to us? That it’s a period of his career he wishes he could forget?

Well, his time at Celtic is a period that, as a supporter, I wish I could forget. But unfortunately, the memory of it lives with me, just as watching Willie Falconer and players like him still lingers in my brain, no matter how much I use the Dettol and the wire brush to try and scrub them out. The only difference is that Willie Falconer didn’t cost us what was then a club-record fee.

The fact that we paid millions for a player as bad as Berkovic actually infuriates me. And you have to remind yourself that this was the same period when we signed a player called Rafael Scheidt—who, bad as he was, actually inspires better memories than Berkovic does. Because at least he lived up to his name.

Berkovic had talent. He just couldn’t be bothered using it in Scotland. He came up here on holiday, got paid a huge sum of money by our club—most of it under false pretences, in my view, because he was pretending to be a committed footballer.

Celtic fans can cope with bad players. We’ve had plenty of them over the years. But bad players don’t get subjected to hatred by Celtic fans. And nor—despite what Berkovic apparently believes—do Israeli players. Ask Beram Kayal. Ask Nir Bitton. Ask Liel Abada. None of them were singled out for negative treatment because they were Israelis. They were revered by most of our fans. All were respected as good footballers who gave their all. We don’t discriminate. Except against non-triers.

If Berkovic’s relationship with our fans is less than good, I can only suggest it’s because he offered us nothing. He gave us nothing. He leached money out of Celtic without giving anything back. He was a waste of space—an expensive waste of space at that.

And if he had just been untalented, we could probably have forgiven him.

But for being an openly non-trying footballer? No. We don’t forgive that. We don’t forget that, and especially not when he’s such an arrogant, idiotic loudmouth—and an anti-Irish bigot to boot. We have enough of them here already.

Photo by Mark Leech/Offside via Getty Images

Our latest podcast episode is up. We called it Just Another Saturday.