Cunning Shunsuke Nakamura pretended he couldn't speak English as a ruse to avoid having to speak to the Scottish press, according to former Celtic teammate Mark Wilson.
The Japanese midfielder enjoyed a trophy-laden four-year spell in Paradise after Gordon Strachan stumped up £2.5m to prise him from Serie A side Reggina.
He became an idol on account of his graceful passing and astonishing free-kicks, most memorably curling a 30-yard effort into the postage stamp against Manchester United in the Champions League.
And Wilson reckons Nakamura was happy to let his wand of a left foot do the talking rather than deal with the rigmarole of press duties and let it mistakenly become known that he struggled with English.
He told the Fitba Daft podcast : “He was my top player I’ve played with. He was frightening - unreal.
“What a guy as well. Kidded on he couldn’t speak English so he didn’t need to do any Press, which I thought was brilliant.
“Even kidded on to most of his teammates that he couldn’t speak English - the ones he didn’t want to speak English to.
“But (he was) great; very quiet.
“His wee interpreter was brilliant, his name was Maka – so you had Naka and Maka, which was great.
“And every day after training, he used to fire his wee interpreter in goals and hit free kicks into him. It was brilliant. Every day, it was brilliant.
“The wee guy would stand with the oversized Celtic jacket on, over his knuckles, and he’d stand in goal and try and save these free kicks that (Edwin) Van Der Sar and guys couldn’t save, and he’s diving about in the goal in the p*****g rain. It was brilliant.
“We used to all look out the window, looking at him, saying ‘that guy’s not getting paid enough for this’.
“It was class. What a player he was, he was awesome.”
