Portrait of an icon: Henrik Larsson

Football365's portrait of an icon series this week features Henrik Larsson.

I have put the first part below, the full article can be read at http://www.football365.com/news/portrait-of-an-icon-henrik-larsson.

It's really good and I highly recommend it. Once read please leave your favourite Henrik stories below.

I miss that guy but the memories are rich
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Don’t judge a book by its cover, nor a footballer by their debut. On his first game for Celtic against Hibernian in 1997, new signing Henrik Larsson passed the ball to opponent Chic Charnley, who promptly scored the winning goal. Larsson’s first game at Parkhead ended in home defeat to Dunfermline, while his home European debut was marked by a first-half own goal. His first home league goals in Scotland came on his 26th birthday – September 20, 1997.

Signed to replace the departed Paolo di Canio, Celtic fans were initially unconvinced by their £650,000 Swedish striker. Rangers had won nine league titles in succession, and the exits of Pierre van Hooijdonk and John Collins a year earlier had weakened a squad Wim Jansen had taken over from Tommy Burns. After two games of the season, Celtic sat bottom of the table.

Seven years later, Larsson was Celtic’s King of Kings. He is the club’s most celebrated player of the modern age, their greatest goalscorer, cult hero and icon. When he departed for Barcelona in 2004, supporters gave him three separate send-offs. As he left the Parkhead pitch for the last time, Larsson burst into tears. In the press conference after the game, those tears continued to flow. If Larsson had surprised Celtic with his brilliance, Celtic had surprised Larsson too. They would never leave his heart.

Most emphatically, Larsson was a majestic goalscorer, the like of which British football had not seen since Jimmy Greaves. Having scored 50 times in 56 league games at Helsingborgs in his native Sweden, Larsson had struggled at Feyenoord. In Scotland and at Celtic he found his natural habitat; 242 goals in 313 games followed.

It is the variety in Larsson’s Celtic goals that is most striking. From overhead kicks to tap-ins via any number of one-one-ones, chips, drives and clips, he was better on his ‘weaker’ left foot than most strikers on their stronger right. The party pieces were the headers or, more exactly, the leaps from standing starts that facilitated those headers. Despite being 5 ft 9 in, Larsson regularly out-jumped taller defenders; once at that height, he generated extraordinary power and accuracy.

Never has that been more evident that in the 2003 UEFA Cup final. Eighty thousand Celtic fans travelled to Seville for that final, described by UEFA as the largest travelling support to have assembled for a single sporting fixture. Larsson’s two headers dragged Celtic to the brink of their first European trophy since the Lisbon Lions of 1967. The commentary to his first goal is the shouted soundtrack to his Celtic career. It still lifts the hairs on my neck: “Larsson…scores…of course he does. Henrik Larsson always scores."