Former football star spotted as he returns to Hampden to recreate famous goal

IT isn’t everyone who gets to celebrate a winning goal at Hampden Park.

So it was entirely understandable that former Romania star Daniel Pancu couldn’t resist recreating the strike which ultimately settled a March 2004 friendly between his country and Scotland on a visit to Hampden Park.

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It was a nice touch from the staff at the Scottish Football Museum, who later shared pictures on their X/Twitter account.

They wrote: “We were visited by former Romanian international Daniel Pancu today – and he insisted on recreating his goal against Scotland from 2004!

“We hope you enjoyed your visit, Daniel!”

The match finished 2-1 to the Romanians, who featured world class talents such as Adrian Mutu and Christian Chivu against Berti Vogts’ men.

Substitute Pancu grabbed the second following a mistake from Stephen Pressley after Chivu’s deflected free-kick had given them the opener.

Substitute James McFadden bagged Scotland’s first international goal at Hampden for eight years shortly afterwards.

But there’s one real reason why fans of Scotland and Celtic won’t want to look back on the match fondly.

And that’s because of the 18th minute tackle from Wolves star Ioan Ganea on current Celtic assistant boss John Kennedy, who was making his debut that night.

At that point the Hoops kid’s star was in the ascendant, having recently won praise for his role in a goalless draw in the Nou Camp.

But he was stretchered off on his debut and despite numerous operations and several attempted comebacks, Kennedy was never quite able to get his career back to those highs – for club OR country.

The incident left a bad taste in the mouth – with Ganea never admitting to any guilt or malice over the challenge.

None of this is Pancu’s fault, of course.

The man who had no fewer than SIX spells as a player at Rapid Bucharest is currently the Romanian Under-21 manager

But reacting to the Scottish Football Museum’s post, veteran Tartan Army chief Hamish Husband wrote wistfully: “The match that ended John Kennedy’s career.”

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