Former Celtic defender Paul Caddis made his home debut against Barcelona before facing a media scandal the following day.
The retired right-back, 35, was quickly thrown into the deep end as a 20-year-old for the Champions League last-16 clash at Celtic Park.
He had the near-impossible task of dealing with Ronaldinho and a young Lionel Messi before they went on to win a famous sextuple – the first team to successfully do so under Pep Guardiola. And speaking on ‘Under The Cosh,’ Caddis revealed just how difficult yet extraordinary the experience was.
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He said: “I knew regardless of what I did, if I got abused, they [team and fans] would look after me for being a young lad. But if I did alright I had everything to gain so I was fine.
“To play against them was a different level. The boss hammered me at half-time, sating ‘can you not see those f****** balls being diag-d onto Ronaldhinho’s toe?’
“Shunsuke Nakamura was brilliant going forward but gave me no help defensively so it was just [Eric] Abidal overlapping me for fun – I was all over the gaff. But what an experience.
“Directly against Ronaldinho and all. Strongest a*** I have ever f****** felt. As soon as the ball came in, the first thing he done was bang [back into you]. By the time I’d recovered from being winded the ball was miles away.”
Yet the buzz of a dream home debut was quickly overshadowed by a scandal involving the Scotsman the following day in which a woman falsely accused him of fathering her unborn child.
Caddis explained: “I played on the Tuesday night but on the Wednesday morning I was in the front page and the back page in the same day. Some girl had come out and said I had fathered her child, which was a load of s***.
“I was looking at the back page buzzing, saying ‘look at that picture of me and Ronaldinho,’ then looking at the back page seeing a munter in the front saying I was…
“[The paper] had the story ready for about six weeks. It was a load of s*** but she sold this dream to the papers and they printed it.
"I had to do a DNA test, at the time she made me thought [the baby was mine] but three months later it turned out it wasn’t.”
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