Celtic defender Mikael Lustig appeared to swear at Italy fans during Sweden’s World Cup play-off victory.
The 30-year-old featured for the entire 90 minutes of Sweden’s second-leg clash, as they held Italy to a 0-0 draw to book their place in Russia next summer with a 1-0 aggregate win against the 2006 World Cup champions.
However, the victory was marred by Lustig’s actions during the national anthems before the second leg had even kicked off, with The Sun claiming the defender called Italy fans “f****** c****” in his native language.
Sweden’s national anthem was booed and jeered by the Italian home support at the San Siro, which angered the Celtic ace enough to explode with such an outburst.
In response, Lustig took to Instagram to apologise to fans for his actions. Posting in Swedish, the lofty defender posed a lengthy paragraph explaining his loss of composure. It translates as:
“Monday was one of the biggest evenings I’ve experienced in my career,” Lustig said. “Taking out Italy on their home turf is still like a dream and getting to do it together with this gang is something that cannot be described.
“Unfortunately, something happened before kick-off, which I would like to comment on. The Italian audience booed during the Swedish national anthem and under the enormous press, I lost my composure. I got angry and screamed out of frustration at the audience.
“I chose a word that I regret in retrospect. It wasn’t okay, it isn’t okay and I’m sorry. I’ve been feeling very bad about this in the last few days. Now I hope that we can learn lessons from this and help to remove these bad words by means of my bad example. Love.”
Lustig is expected to start for Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic side on Saturday afternoon, as they face Ross County in the Scottish Premiership away from home.
Rodgers will be looking for his side to increase their unbeaten run of matches in domestic football to 64, with three points enough to see them go six points clear at the top of the table if Aberdeen and Hibernian drop points.
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