EVEN now, the best part of a decade on, Kieran Tierney can remember the buzz. It was a Thursday night at Barrowfield and Tommy Burns was coming down to take the training.
You can read elsewhere in this section about how everything didn’t always progress so serenely for the young Tierney as he progressed through the Parkhead youth ranks, but the chance to learn from Burns was something which is indelibly marked on his memory.
No wonder then that Tierney appreciated it when Brendan Rodgers said in midweek that he sees the same love for the club in the 20-year-old that he once saw in the eyes of Burns, with whom he worked for a spell at Reading.
“It is special [to be compared by Rodgers to him] because I know how special Tommy is to the club,” said Tierney. “It wouldn’t be what it is today without him. So for me to be mentioned in the same sentence as the gaffer said is brilliant. But I’ve got a very, very long way to go to even get near what Tommy did for this club.
“When I was younger, maybe about 10 or 12, he would come down to Barrowfield and train us,” Tierney added. “There was maybe only once or twice that he trained us, but even then the lads were all buzzing, really nervous before training. I think it was a Thursday, maybe every Thursday for a while, that he came down. And it shows you how special he was, coming down to take our Under-10s or Under-11s. That just shows you the kind of character he was.
Burns would surely have been proud in midweek if he had seen this 20-year-old dealing manfully with the veteran smarts of Arjen Robben, as Celtic largely gave as good as they got against an illustrious Bayern Munich side. From the moment he left the much vaunted Chilean Arturo Vidal on his backside as Celtic swept upfield in the early minutes, this was a performance in a left wing back role for supporters and perhaps scouts to purr over.
Read more: Celtic star Kieran Tierney: Living with my mum and dad helps keep me grounded
It can’t be easy for a member of the PlayStation generation like Tierney to be star-struck when facing the likes of Arjen Robben but he does his best to block it out. The really good news is the dividends it should pay in years to come if he can play at this level at such tender years.
“You can’t give them too much respect,” said the 20-year-old, “where you start sitting off them and not playing your game. Okay so you have to respect everything he has done in the game and that but you have to play your game and try not to let it faze you at all. I tried to make it hard for him, get close to him and I gave it my best.
“You learn a lot in these games,” he added. “Even just from their fitness – it is hard to keep up to their tempo because they are playing at that tempo every week. For years they have been playing like that and for me being so young to play against the top players can only benefit me.”
Part of chief executive Peter Lawwell’s equation, of course, is insuring the club should any of Europe’s mega rich sides eventually arrive to turn this down-to-earth youngster’s head. These clubs, of course, can offer him riches way beyond what Celtic can offer. But all the speculation surrounding Tierney didn’t seem to affect him too much against Bayern.
“There are no negatives about it,” said Tierney. “It’s a compliment if there are big teams watching you. It’s not something that I need to block out. It’s there. It’s a good thing. I’m flattered by the names you hear but I’m loving it at Celtic and enjoying every minute.”
Perhaps one day Tierney will even take stock on what he is achieving. “I don’t really have any time - it’s just game after game after game just now.,” he said. “It’s high pressure, it’s mentally and physically hard. You don’t get too much time to think about anything other than your next day’s training or game. That’s all I’m really concentrating on right now.”
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