Brazilian superstar Kaka, the free transfer from Real Mardrid, will not be in Milans team for tomorrow nights UCL opener with Celtic after stepping on a particularly cold blob of ice cream.

That means the Rossoneri will now be without nine players for the game, and Kaka spoke of his disappointment;

“I was not expecting an injury like this. It is really bad and difficult for me.”

He also revealed that he isn’t going to get paid by Milan during his time out;

“I have spoken at length with the club, the vice-president Adriano Galliani and with the doctors to decide on a few things.

“In the end I decided I don’t want anything from Milan except for love and support until I am better, until I am fully fit and ready to play again.

“For this reason, I have decided to suspend my current pay for this period of time. The only thing I ask is for support and help to recover properly.”

He must have landed on his head.

Kaka is only thirty one, but heres an interesting little statistic..

Theres a whole load of stats over on 90minutecynic, if you like that sort of thing, though the one that drops your jaw is the fee when Kaka went from Milan to Madrid- 68m euros-and what the Spanish side got back for him when he left to go back to Milan -£0 , which begs the question, how long have  David Murray and Dick Advocaat been at Real Madrid ?

90minutecynic

Youth coach John  Kennedy is  in Milan ahead of tomorrow afternoons UEFA Youth League game against Milan, and he reckons that Celtic should try to upset Milans Mario Balotelli and put him off his game. In a bizarre statement he says thats the way forward, and then changes his mind halfway through;

“You would try and upset him because on his night he is a handful for anyone.

“He has been (upset) in the past but it’s important you don’t get too caught up in trying to upset someone else.

“You have to remember that you’ve got a job to do in the team. You could get dragged into a one-on-one war with a player to upset him and then forget about the job you have got in the team.

“It’s important players stick to their jobs, whatever the manager asks them to carry out. If you can stop Milan playing and nick a chance or two then you might just get a result.”

Senior team manager Neil Lennon was a bit calmer, and more realistic;

“We don’t have to win it.

“I would love us to win, but, more importantly, I want to see a performance.

“And I don’t want us to be gallant losers, either. ”

“I want us to go to the San Siro, play strongly, and play with the maturity we are starting to show.”

Celtic are not the only Glasgow side with a big game this week.

Its Ramsdens  cup quarter final night, and new club 2nd Rangers tread new territory under manager Ally Mccoist by making the last eight of a competition for the first time. We wish them well , and it will be interesting to see how they handle a big occasion. The club, currently undergoing a financial restructuring, where all the money is transferred to another account, have introduced this fantastic new tracksuit, featuring the now familiar cracked crest

Fashion is another genre in which the new club are making their mark, including this new top which cunningly allows the wearer to deny he is walking away.

Peter Grant , who helped Tony Mowbray when the latter was Celtic boss a couple of years ago, has told the Herald that he wasn’t a big fan of Scott Brown, in fact, as the headline says;

‘If someone had offered us £4m, I’d have driven him down myself’

Then Grant , now that he is actually watching football in Scotland for BT Sports, admits he has had an about turn on Brown, but says its all down to a chat he had with him. Initially, Grant was asked his opinion of Brown ;

“I think Peter Lawwell [Celtic chief executive] was wanting Robbie Keane to be the captain and, when Tony said that to me, I said: ‘You can’t give loan players the captaincy at Celtic Football Club. Gie’s a break’. When he said Scott Brown, I said: ‘Not for me, gaffer. He shouldn’t even be playing’. I’ve been delighted that he’s turned it around. This season and the end of last season, I’m so pleased to see how he’s played in that position.”

Then, during a Glasgow Derby, Grant apparently spoke to Brown…

“One of the last words I had with him was at half-time in the Rangers game,” recalls Grant, who played 362 games for the club in a Celtic career that stretched from 1982 to 1987.

“I said to him: ‘Listen, I know what it’s like. I’ve been there. I want to kick him [an opponent] up and down the pitch because of what he’s done, because I’ve seen what he’s done. But know that the ref is looking at you’.

“The referee used to say to me, in the tunnel before we went out: ‘Peter, you’re not even getting one today’. So I told Scott that I knew what he was going through, that he wanted to just say, ‘Right, I’ll show everybody how big I am’. I had to learn that as well.”

Grant believed his message to his midfielder was being transmitted successfully. “He seemed to be taking the information in when I told him to keep calm. So, after the game, I’m spitting feathers. We lost the game in injury-time. And whether it was an ordering off or not, he put himself in the position. At that time, I thought he was never in a million years ready to become Celtic captain.”

He believed Brown’s motivation was misguided. “It was getting to the stage that he wanted to keep the fans happy, thinking: ‘I’ll show them; I’ll get stuck in’. But that lasts so long. You’ve got to produce, got to play the right way. And that is happening now. Everything is snowballing. I saw him playing against some of the best players in Europe when Scotland took on England, and he led his troops so well.”

Peter Grant, along with Tony Mowbray , was sacked shortly after that Glasgow derby, bringing to an end one of the most dismal periods in the clubs history.

Grant does genuinely sound like he cannot believe Brown has matured so well. , and his between the lines admission that he hadn’t seen him-or Celtic-play before he joined BT Sports makes him the ideal person to seek an opinion from.

” The Pointer ” will always be remembered for the 1994 Scottish Cup final, and not his time here with Mowbray.  Incidentally, the article has him at Celtic from 82 to 87. You’d like to think thats a mis print, but it probably isn’t.

Here, he tells Tony Mowbray where they are both heading after they got a call to go to see Lawwell.

Celtic have been named 11th best team of all time in an article in 4-4-2 magazine, which is all very nice, but the credibility of the article disappears with this;

” 17. Preston North End (1888 – 1889) Star Players: Howarth, John Goodall, Trainer, Fred Dewhurst., ”

The author , though, claims he remembers them well.

Yesterdays pictures of John the Baptist ( and I don’t bloody care who drew it. ) and a clerk at work, gave us Lisbon Lion John Clark. Today we have this guy.

which has to be the easiest one ever.