But the club’s former striker draws the line at endorsing the suggestion the Japanese attacker could be considered akin to a modern-day Henrik Larsson. Parallels have been drawn in some quarters between the Celtic all-time great, who was a contemporary of Hartson in the early 2000s, and the 26-year-old, who has taken Scottish football by storm with 13 goals in the three months since his £4.6m move from homeland club Vissel Kobe. Only last weekend, pundit Stephen Craigan invoked Larsson in marvelling at Furuhashi as he claimed a double in the 4-2 victory away to Dundee.
“I think Kyogo has a bit of everything, I think he’s a very special player. Some of his goals show you that he is a world class operator: his movement, his touch, his finishing,” said the former Celtic frontman. “[But] I would never put him in the same category as Henrik now because Henrik was the king. Henrik...242 goals, 315 games. Brought us out of the mire every week. Was a phenomenal player - did it for Barcelona, did it for Man United, did it for his country in major tournaments.
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Hide Ad"Henrik was the best player, by a country mile, at Celtic in my time. So there is no comparison between the two - and that’s no disrespect to Kyogo. When Stephen said he has similar movement to Henrik, I said ‘yes, but he is flippin’ 303 goals behind Henrik at the minute..’. We can’t make comparisons, I would never make a comparison.”