Marseille's Ligue 1 benchwarmer Valere Germain apparently turned down the chance to replace Moussa Dembele at Scottish Premiership champions Celtic.
Many players can only dream of donning the famous green and white hoops of Celtic, a historic and respected giant of European football who have won the domestic treble in each of the last three seasons.
But not Valere Germain.
According to Le10 Sport, the Marseille striker turned his nose up at a potential move to Parkhead in the summer of 2018. At the time, a striker who won the Ligue 1 title alongside Kylian Mbappe and Bernardo Silva at Monaco had apparently been lined up to replace the Lyon-bound Moussa Dembele on the green half of Glasgow.
But how have things gone for Germain after he made it clear that Celtic wasn’t for him? Well, he hasn’t exactly been prolific, put it that way.
Since the start of the 2018/19 season, Germain has scored just eight goals in 46 games in all competitions. And with Marseille paying big for Argentine international Dario Benedetto in August, the 29-year-old’s game time is starting to slip away too as he goes from regular starter to bench-warmer.
In the last 13 months, Ryan Christie, Celtic’s skilful midfielder with an eye for the spectacular, has outscored Germain by 11. In fact, the former Inverness starlet has netted as many goals in the first few weeks of this season than Germain has managed in the last year.
Some of those, as St Johnstone goalkeeper Zander Clark will no doubt admit, have been truly sensational.
Critics of Scottish football, and there are many, will point out that goals are easier to come by at Celtic than they are at Marseille. But Germain has done very little in over a year to suggest he’d have been more Dembele and less Amido Balde.
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