For Victor Wanyama, it was a statement of respect and ambition. When the Kenya midfielder joined Celtic in 2011, he asked to be given the No67 shirt. It was a move that acknowledged the club’s European Cup-winning team of 1967, the fabled Lisbon Lions and, also, one that advertised his dream to emulate them.
By any reckoning, it was a bold decision from an unheralded player who had arrived from Germinal Beerschot in Belgium for £900,000. Wanyama was 20 at the time. Was he setting himself up for a fall? “I am somebody who is not afraid to try because I believe that failing is just when you are not willing to fight,” he says. “I was ready to fight. That’s why I was not scared to take the shirt.”
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