Every club have their heroes, but during this international break, The Athletic is paying tribute to those players cherished for more than just what they did with the ball at their feet — the modern-day cult heroes…
When canvassing friends, family and people affiliated with Celtic for their favourite memories of Georgios Samaras, almost all of them highlight something away from the football pitch.
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His eccentric dress sense is mentioned, as is his quiet gravitas, but what is most often cited is his heartwarming friendship with Jay Beatty, a young Celtic fan from County Armagh in Northern Ireland with Down’s syndrome.
Before a 2013-14 Champions League qualifier against Cliftonville in Belfast, Beatty was invited onto Celtic’s bus and sang “Hail Hail the Celts are here” with the players. Samaras was moved by Beatty’s story and kept in contact, and Celtic invited the family over for the final game of that season against Dundee United. Manager Neil Lennon gave Beatty his league winner’s medal, while the player carried the boy around the pitch after full-time to take in the applause of the crowd as fans celebrated their third league title in a row.
Samaras scored in a 3-1 win that day, and later revealed that Celtic had chosen not to renew his contract. It was his last game in Celtic colours.
There was something poignant in Samaras, sharing his final moments with the club he had grown to love during six and a half years in Glasgow, choosing to bid farewell by realising the dream of a young fan. It suggested a generosity and humility that his former team-mates insist were not only entirely genuine but barely scratched the surface of his warmth of character.
This is not to say that Samaras lacked in special moments on the pitch.
Many fans will mention his brace in a 2-0 win at Ibrox in 2011, or his last-minute header against Spartak Moscow in 2012 to secure Celtic’s first-ever Champions League group stage away win. Others may mention his pivotal goals after he first arrived from Manchester City, initially on loan, during the dramatic 2007-08 title race.
Samaras was a big-game player, capable of genius but also of immense frustration, for fans, team-mates and coaches, with his perceived demeanour and work rate. That conflict between greatness and fallibility alone qualifies him as a Celtic cult hero.
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But that deeper connection with the supporters, that ineffable “getting the club” factor, as captured in his friendship with Wee Jay? That rubberstamps him as one of Celtic’s truly special cult heroes.
Samaras arrived at Celtic with something to prove.
He joined from Manchester City in January 2008, initially on loan, with the albatross title of “Premier League flop” hanging around his neck.
Samaras had been one of the Eredivisie’s bright young talents in the mid-2000s with Heerenveen but had struggled to fulfil that promise in two years at City. Yet given his reputation after his breakthrough in the Netherlands and the £6 million fee City paid for him, there was a weight of expectation to Samaras’ arrival at Celtic halfway through the then-SPL’s fiercest title race in years.
“He came into the club and had a wee bit of aura and stature about him from where he’d come from,” former Celtic full-back Mark Wilson says. “We’d all heard the name and seen glimpses of what he’d done. You just hoped a spark would come on the pitch, and you were wondering whether he could handle the hustle and bustle of playing for Celtic.
“Obviously when you leave a big club like he did, there is always something to prove, but Sammy was lucky he was coming to another big club where he would have the stage to perform. He was playing with quality players and expectations were high. I think he took to it well.”
In his loan spell, Samaras scored five goals across just 625 league minutes — reducing the goalscoring burden on first-choice strikers Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Scott McDonald. They were crucial goals too; including winners against Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Aberdeen and Motherwell as Celtic overcame a seven-point deficit — having also played a game more than Rangers — at the end of March to win the league on the final day of the season.
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Celtic made his move permanent that summer, and though he scored 37 goals combined over the next three seasons, he increasingly split opinion among fans, and frustrated all three of his managers as Celtic conceded the title to Rangers for all three consecutive campaigns — first Gordon Strachan, then Tony Mowbray, and finally Lennon.
He was not trusted to start every week, he drifted in and out of games (often quite literally given his hovering running technique), frequently failed to contribute defensively, and his decision-making let him down at times. Here was a footballer so languid you could imagine the adjective was invented purely to describe his gait during a match.
“I think he went through a real rollercoaster at Celtic,” Wilson argues. “He came to the club, started very well and fans thought, ‘This guy is going to go from strength to strength, he is going to go for X millions of pounds’, but the problem with Sammy is that his demeanour probably didn’t fit the picture that people had of what a really top striker should be. The hustle and bustle, 100 miles-an-hour who never gives a defender a moment’s peace.
“Sammy wasn’t like that, and that was maybe what made fans doubt him. It was quite widely written that if Sammy doesn’t turn it on in the first five minutes, that told you what you were getting in the other 85. From the players’ point of view, there was a general feeling like that amongst the players that you knew what you were getting from him right at the start of games.
“You could see it in training. Sometimes he’d be very lax, very laidback. He’d frustrate you at times, and at that time there was a lot of hard graft and running work. But if you gave him running, 50-yard-sprints, Sammy would be right up the front, because of the big strides, he was a fit and fast boy. There was no doubting that. He was just an enigma, in that he didn’t put that into games sometimes.”
During this period, no player seemed more divisive because supporters, if nothing else, want their players to give 100 per cent. Every heavy touch or overhit pass seemed to be met with howls of frustration. But even during this downturn in form and reputation, Samaras was subtly acting as an excellent foil for other attacking players. He was deceptively creative — he recorded 49 assists in 243 Celtic appearances — and his bursts of acceleration and physicality attracted attention from defenders and took it away from his team-mates.
“He had very good striking partners when he was at the club,” Wilson remembers, “but Sammy also made them better. He was an unselfish player. A big guy who was a willing runner; once you could get him going that is! I think his attitude changed slightly, he might have caught wind of that perception of him. He upped his work-rate in games and turned into a big-game player for Celtic.”
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Though Samaras had scored important and dramatic goals in the first half of his Celtic career, arguably the first brilliant big-game performance from him arrived midway through the 2010-11 season. Celtic arrived at Ibrox as heavy underdogs, but won 2-0 with the Greece international getting both goals. Though it was not exactly a turning point — Samaras having his penalty saved at the same venue in the final Old Firm of the season proved decisive in the title race and vilified him once again — it sparked an appreciation of Samaras as a player for the big stage. That performance and result even developed its own moniker, “Sammy Sunday”.
In the second half of Samaras’ Celtic career, these important performances began to snowball. He was a crucial creative presence when Celtic won their first league in four years in 2011-12, only scoring six goals but contributing 15 assists, and his uptick in form coincided with Lennon playing him as a left winger rather than a striker in the 4-4-2.
Over the next two seasons, he was just as effective and selfless a creator as a goalscorer, producing 21 assists. The individualist had become a vital team player.
But his pinnacle is inarguably his performances during Celtic’s run to the 2012-13 Champions League’s last 16. Including qualifiers, he scored in every away leg except in the doomed knockout tie against Juventus. Beyond his goals, he was a selfless out-ball in games where Celtic were predominantly on the back foot; most notably that famous 2-1 win over peak-era Barcelona.
“He was massive for us in that run,” former Celtic centre-back Kelvin Wilson explains. “Sammy and Fraser (Forster, the goalkeeper) were probably the two biggest influences. Fraser was the rock and Sammy was the saviour of the team. Especially away from home, because we were under the cosh a lot, we knew that we were only going to get two or three chances a game. That’s where you need players like Sammy, because he has the attributes to take advantage of those situations. He’s got the pace, the directness, the height, and he can score goals.”
By the time he bade Celtic farewell in the summer of 2014, he had largely torn up the portrait of him as the flamboyant and frustrating model of inconsistency. He had demonstrably delivered when and where it mattered on multiple occasions, and his legacy at Celtic was effectively enshrined.
There is a difference between a fondly remembered player and a cult hero, however.
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Samaras’ distinction lay in the type of player and type of person he was, and how those identities overlapped with one other.
Both Wilsons admit accommodating the languid Greek could be frustrating at times, but that it was ultimately worthwhile.
“Whatever team you’re playing in, you’re always going to get one or two players that you’re going to sacrifice them tracking back,” Kelvin Wilson says. “Sammy was one of them. You knew that on the turnover, you get the ball to Sammy, when he can stretch his legs and run, you’re probably going to get an attempt on goal.
“I’ve never played with a player like Sammy. Sometimes you wanted to shake him and yell, ‘Come on!’, but other times he would just drift past people like they’re not even there. Sometimes in the same game.”
Another issue for Samaras was that he was often an individualist being asked to suppress his free instinct.
“I remember being in the dressing room with Gordon (Strachan),” Mark Wilson says, “who was very rigid with his formations, very strict with his people. Thomas Gravesen was the famous one, he didn’t play anymore because Gordon thought he took it upon himself to go where he wanted. Gordon went two up front and he wanted two central guys to play off each other, and Sammy did have a tendency to drift over to that left-hand side.
“Neil (Lennon) was similar to Gordon. What Neil and Gordon wanted was him to get into better shape (formation) when they lost the ball. But he drifted over there (to the left) because he knew that was a strength. He was quality when he got the ball, with those big strides when he opened his legs up and knocked it by someone. He knew his strengths, and maybe he would have benefitted by playing in a more fluid system.”
That sense of quiet individualism on the pitch was a manifestation of Samaras’s personality off of it. Both team-mates independently remember his singular fashion sense, though Mark Wilson recalls a specific habit as well.
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“He always made sure he was wearing something different from what all the other boys were wearing,” he says. “If it was a suit, he’d wear trainers instead of shoes. If it was a tracksuit, it would be a hoodie over it and one leg rolled up. I don’t know why. Every single time, he’d do something like that.
“It got to the point where the boys would be wondering, ‘What is Sammy going to be wearing?’ Some boys got frustrated with it, and it was strange, but I guess he just wanted to be an individual.”
It was not just his free-spiritedness that translated onto the pitch; that nonchalance that sometimes exasperated supporters was because of his serenely calm character.
“My family is from the Caribbean, and Caribbeans are known for being very laidback,” says Kelvin Wilson. “But Sammy puts them all to shame, he is the most laidback person I’ve ever come across.
“I’d just come from Nottingham Forest (in 2011) and I knew who Sammy was because of his time at Man City. So many Premier League players, young players, especially at a good level, they think the world owes them a lot. They like to party, the spotlight. But Sammy was the opposite. You look at his contracts, his big transfer fees. But you’d never know that with Sammy, because he was so chilled all of the time. There’s not many of those in football, good players who are also just genuinely nice guys.”
His friendship with Jay Beatty is possibly the most pertinent example of such wholeheartedness.
After leaving Celtic, Samaras kept in contact with the family and they visited him in Athens in December 2014.
A month later, Beatty scored a penalty at half-time of Celtic’s 2-0 win away at Hamilton. He won the SPFL’s goal of the month competition, getting 97 per cent of the vote.
Samaras announced him as the winner of the competition with a video message, saying “Jay my friend, me and you are the same, scoring goals. I’m very happy to announce that you won the goal of the month. Well done pal, great job. I miss you and I love you. See you, Jay.”
As recently as 2018, when he was 14, Beatty appeared on BBC TV’s The One Show in a segment about his story, and Samaras recorded another a video message for him: “Hi Jay, I hope you remember me! Keep supporting Celtic forever and ever. Keep doing what you are doing because you give a lot of strength to the people around you. Hopefully, I will see you soon in Glasgow at a Celtic game. Hail hail.”
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Theirs is a friendship maintained of Samaras’ own volition, fulfilled by a natural kindness. He understood the peculiarly reverential bond between fan and player and wanted to make it reciprocal. Through Beatty, he wanted to share his pride and joy about playing for Celtic. That was the final and emphatic checkmark in his entry qualification for cult hero.
Samaras is unlikely to dispel the caricature of him as the flop and clown down south after a ineffective season with West Brom (no starts or goals, eight sub appearances) after leaving Celtic, but he clearly grew past caring. Over time, he proved himself in Glasgow and found a home there.
While he matured and overcame some of the issues which troubled his early days at Celtic, others calcified into the cultishness of his heroism. Would he possess the same mystique if he was a hard-working all-rounder of a forward? Would he have cultivated the same aura if he scored 30 goals for six years on the bounce?
He would certainly be considered a modern great, but it was his flaws and quirks which sculpted him into the largely-revered figure he is today.
Take away the individualism, humility and laidback languor, and you remove what made Samaras, Samaras.
Editors’s pick: Mino Raiola and Jonathan Barnett, an audience with two super agents
(Photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)
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