Caught on Camera: Celtic Star’ Harrowing Experience – Sick, Defeated, and Attacked Amid Derby
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A day in the young life of Arne Engels that the Belgian is likely never to forget. It began like any other.
With a bite of breakfast.
But when Engels ran to the toilet to throw it all back up again he may have suspected that things were about to go from bad to worse. Struck down by a winter bug, Engels had to have his name scored off Celtic’s starting XI for the New Year derby at Ibrox. He then suffered in silence from the bench as Rangersromped towards a shock 3-0 win.
And, then, when it finally was his turn to be thrown on as a late sub, he was floored by a flying coin, hurled at him by some lame brain from the home support, who is now the subject of a Police Scotland manhunt. “It was not a nice experience for the whole team,” Engels said in the biggest understatement of the first few days of January.
He went on: “Every time when you lose, you’re disappointed, you’re disappointed in yourself and in the team. So we knew that we could do a lot of things better
“In the morning I threw up my breakfast, so that was not really nice and a nice feeling in my stomach the whole day actually. That’s the most important thing – you need 11 players or 15 players that are really energetic – but I wanted to be there for the team in the end.”
Moments later Engels was sparked out by some missile throwing moron as he stood over a corner kick. He went on: “Of course these things shouldn’t be happening. You’re on a football pitch and that needs to be a safe place.
“You’ll always have people that are saying things to you or something, but that’s normal, that’s part of football. But throwing things or doing stuff like that is not really part of football for me.
It’s a shock when something goes onto your head and after the shock it was also sore. But like I said in the end, you need to still play those ten minutes and still need to focus on that and still need to perform. So, there was not really time to think about it or to sit still on something.
it hit my eyebrow, so it was really close to my eye. I was lucky that it was not on my eye. Of course, in the beginning, your first reaction is feeling if everything is okay or is there blood or something. Once I did that, then it was OK. I stood up and just moved on.
“My parents were watching on TV at home so they looked at all the replays. It was not really nice for them to see. They were also a bit worried.
“But in the end, it was OK. They also saw me keeping on and moving on and still playing those 10 minutes. They knew that it was OK.
“But it’s never nice to see a player get hit even if it’s a beer or something or a beer cup or anything like this. It’s never nice to see because it sometimes comes from so high in the stands and it gets thrown with such speed onto your head that it cause real damage. That’s never nice to see.”
But, Engels says the personal trauma and the gut wrenching disappointment of it all has merely strengthened Celtic’s collective desire to secure another league title – by way of payback to that Ibrox tosser. And that became clear to him on a team day out at the darts at Ally Pally.
Speaking of his team mates he said: “Yeah, they were lovely. All the teammates here are so nice to me and helping me in each way. Integrating into the group was really easy for me and really nice because everybody was so kind and so open. That was easy for me.
“Also, in those kind of moments, you see that we are a team, that everybody is concerned about you and wants you to do good or wants you to be good. That’s a really nice feeling that we have here in the dressing room.
Yes, 100 per cent these things make us even more determined. It’s like bouncing back. We are really good at it and everybody was speaking to each other and everybody was really, really disappointed in the game and in the performance. That makes it a really, really good squad and everybody is really determined to win it again.
‘For me, it would be hopefully my first time, but everybody is so focused on that, on the goals that we put ourselves at the beginning of the season.
Everybody is working every day really hard to get those goals together.”
The first step to recovery came on Sunday with a 3-0 defeat of St Mirren to cement a 13 point gap at the top of the table. The next comes with a visit from high flying Dundee United.
And, after a slapping of the wrists from Brendan Rodgers to those fans who showed signs of panic against the Paisley men, Engels admits he’s flourishing in the pressure pot of playing at a packed Parkhead. He nodded: “I like the pressure. It puts me on the top of my toes to perform and I think everybody has it here inside of the building – everybody needs a bit of pressure and everybody is on top of their performance when they feel it.
“Those are also things that you see in the Champions League, when the pressure is there, then everybody is standing up and performing and doing really well. For me it’s a really nice thing to experience the pressure here and to perform
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