Leigh Griffiths: Champions League will show I'm top striker

As prolific and decorated as he is, Leigh Griffiths knows he is also never short of doubters.

Leigh Griffiths celebrates scoring Scotland's second in the 2-2 draw against England.

It is something he has become accustomed to over the past few years but that doesn’t make it any less irritable for the Celtic and Scotland striker.

Griffiths hopes that one consequence of his Hampden heroics last Saturday, when his first two goals for his country so nearly earned a famous victory over England, will be to silence the critics who claimed he simply couldn’t cut it at international level.

But the 26-year-old also believes he will never earn universal acceptance as a top-class front man until he produces the goods in the group stage of the Champions League.

“I don’t like people saying I am not good enough,” admitted Griffiths. “A lot of people have said I wasn’t good enough for Scotland. Hopefully, after the performance against England, they think I am.

“My next step is the Champions League. If I can get a crack at that and get a good few games under my belt, maybe people will stop questioning me and start realising what a good player I am.”

Just as it took him until his 13th cap to break his scoring duck for Scotland, so Griffiths has been a slow-burner in European football with Celtic. He failed to find the net in his first 10 European matches for the Scottish champions, while last season his involvement in the Champions League under Brendan Rodgers was largely confined to the qualifying rounds. Griffiths scored five times to help Celtic reach the lucrative group phase but, once they were there, he played second fiddle to French striker Moussa Dembele. In total, Griffiths made only three substitute appearances, totalling just 42 minutes of action in the high-profile section of Europe’s elite club competition.

“When I first signed for Celtic, there were a lot of people who didn’t want me there, who said I couldn’t cut it,” he added. There were a lot of people. Fans, opposition players. But I keep answering people back. When I have had challenges, when they bring other strikers in, I have shown time and time again that I will work my socks off and, when I get chances, I will score goals.

“I am only 15 goals off 100 goals for Celtic now. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would get so close to that and, hopefully, next season I will break it.

“People should know not to write me off now, but they still do. People can say or write what they want about me, but I don’t let it affect me. I have got a lot of good people behind the scenes who back me and know what I can do. I have got a great manager at Celtic who is behind me. He sees me day in and day out. That’s why he has stuck with me. He was frustrated when I was injured earlier but I got a run of games towards the end of the season. Even then, people say I am going to be out the door at the club. I’ll just keep battering the doors down to show I am good enough to stay in the Celtic squad.

“It’s water off a duck’s back. Hopefully, they shut up after the England game. Hopefully, if they watched, then they will say ‘Maybe I was wrong.’ But listen, I am not going to batter pundits for what they say or don’t say.

“This has been a long, hard season. It has been frustrating for me for long spells, so I am delighted to end it on a high. I’ll get just over a week and a bit to enjoy my holidays then I will be back at it. The injuries were frustrating. The manager has stated before that I was rushing back too early, too eager to be involved. If I took an extra week, I would have been fully fit again. From March onwards, when I came back after fracturing my back (playing for Scotland against Slovenia), I had a good run. I knew if I played well, I would get chances to score goals. I’m now looking forward to getting some time off and a bit of sun, then getting back in for pre-season training.

“That Champions League group stage is my target but I have got competition for my place at Celtic. I’m sure the manager will want to strengthen even more, but I just have to keep doing what I am doing and work hard in training. Whether it is for Celtic or Scotland, if the chances come then I will try and put them away.

“People want a big target man who will hold the ball up. But I try to do the opposite by going in behind to stretch defences. That allows other guys to get on the ball and drive us forward. Linking the game up is part of my game I still need to improve on, the gaffer says that, but I’m getting better at it and next season that improvement will continue.”

Griffiths is likely to spend much of his holiday still trying to digest the contrasting emotions he experienced in the extraordinary finale to the 2-2 draw with England which left Scotland’s World Cup qualifying hopes in the balance. “I was on top of the world and then I felt like the whole world had swallowed me up when England equalised,” he said. -“Harry Kane is not the top goalscorer in the English Premier League for no reason. If you grant him a chance, he will put it in the net. Winning 2-1 with two-and-half minutes to go, they get a free-kick at the edge of the box that we dealt with. Then we had a three-on-one attack, we chose the wrong option and they put a great ball in our box for Kane to score. It is probably one of the lowest moments I have felt in football when it should have been the highest.”

There was also an element of relief for Griffiths in the closing stages at Hampden as Italian referee Paolo Tagliavento, pictured, chose not to book him for his wild celebrations after his second free-kick found the back of Joe Hart’s net. A caution would have seen him suspended for Scotland’s next qualifier against Lithuania in Vilnius on 1 September.

“I was quite surprised, I thought a booking was coming my way,” admitted Griffiths. “The ref had a very good game, though, keeping his cards in his pocket until they were needed.”