Celtic's Alistair Johnston has opened up about life in Glasgow and why he had to move house due to continual public attention.
The right-back swapped Montreal for Parkhead at the beginning of 2023 and hasn't looked back since.
Johnston has emerged as a key leader in Celtic's squad and has won seven domestic trophies in his two and a half years at the club.
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While, for the most part, things have gone swimmingly for the Canadian on the pitch, off it, that wasn't initially the case.
He said [One Soccer]: "It’s something that I actually learned as I got to Celtic. It was something that you hear about, you know, it’s a fishbowl, all these different things.
"You never really truly feel it or can understand or grasp it until you’re actually living it. So, I think through about the first six months to a year, I just kind of was taking everything in. And after that, it started to weigh on me.
"I could tell performances were lagging a little bit and I just felt like I was a little overwhelmed. And that’s when I actually started speaking to a sports psychologist and they really helped me with understanding, okay, yeah, being out in public in Glasgow is really difficult. It’s taxing and understanding that.
"And don’t feel like you need to constantly put on a face, but understand that, okay, that is when you leave your front door, it’s gonna be like that. So, you need to have alternate ways to just completely decompress. And that’s when I decided I was gonna move from a flat in the West End and move out and get a house with a private garden and everything, so that we could have the dog running about and just have a bit more privacy.
"And that’s something that I learned is that it was those smaller sacrifices, kind of things like that, that made a big difference for me. Having your own personal space and just finding ways to get away from it. And again, I’m only famous in a 20-mile radius of Glasgow."
Johnston is currently on international duty with Canada, as they aim for Gold Cup glory.
Jesse Marsch's side are into the quarter-finals of the tournament, in which they will take on Guatemala this Sunday.
