Alistair Johnston – A Canadian living in the Glasgow goldfish bowl

In January 2023, the right-back made the move from Montreal to Celtic and has thrived ever since. In his two-and-a-half years with the Hoops, Johnston has become a pivotal figure in the squad and collected seven domestic medals along the way.

Although things have generally gone smoothly for the Canadian on the field, his off-field experience was quite different at first.

Speaking to One Soccer on YouTube, Johnston said: “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.”

He continued: “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 representing Canada on international duty as his side pursues success in the Gold Cup. Jesse Marsch’s men has reached the quarter-finals of the tournament and is set to face Guatemala this Sunday.

Conor Spence

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