When he was growing up back home in Gothenburg, Benjamin Nygren had a mural of Lionel Messi plastered over his bedroom wall.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was the King of Swedish football at the time, played second fiddle. So, too, did Cristiano Ronaldo.
Those were his three idols, but there was a pecking order — and the other two didn’t come close to Barcelona’s little magician.
‘In my room as a child, the whole wall was like a big picture of Messi,’ revealed Nygren shortly after signing for Celtic last summer.
‘He was my main idol. But also Zlatan, a huge guy in Sweden. Cristiano as well. Even though Messi was my favourite, Cristiano Ronaldo was incredible.’
Given that Nygren is left-footed like Messi, many an hour was spent in the back garden trying to hone his skills and replicate the genius of the Argentinian maestro.
Benjamin Nygren is Celtic’s top scorer this season having netted 18 in all competitions
However, his physical attributes were very different to those of a nifty little winger or forward. By the time he turned 18 and left IFK Gothenburg to join Belgian side Genk for a fee of £4million in 2019, Nygren was already 6ft tall.
In the years that have since passed, no-one has ever seemed entirely sure about what his best position happens to be. Least of all the man himself.
Having played in midfield, on the wing, and even as a striker over the first half of this season, Nygren was asked last December where he felt he did his best work.
‘I don’t know,’ said the 24-year-old. ‘To be honest, I don’t think the position matters. I have played in almost all of the offensive positions and in midfield, but I like to move around a lot, to score and assist.’
This is Nygren in a nutshell. He is an enigma, a free spirit who excels when he has a license to roam around the field and influence matches.
In some ways, he is the antithesis to so much of the discourse around modern football. Players are so often pigeon-holed as holding midfielders, attacking midfielders, box-to-box midfielders, wingers, or inside forwards.
It is surely reductive to view players in such a limited scope. It will never be possible to nail Nygren down in any single bracket, although he does tick a lot of those boxes simultaneously.
Perhaps it’s this element of mystery around him, this difficulty to fully pinpoint his best position, that continues to be a source of so much frustration among Celtic supporters when his name is mentioned.
The criticism he receives can be wide of the mark at times. Plainly, in a season which has lurched from one crisis to another for the Parkhead club, the team would be lost without him.
With 18 goals in 43 games across all competitions, Nygren has been their shining light in a campaign otherwise full of dark and gloomy skies.
He has scored big goals, too. Goals with genuine significance and consequence. Instance the victory against Kilmarnock at Rugby Park a fortnight ago.
It was Nygren who scored the equaliser as Celtic fought back from 2-0 down to eventually win 3-2. In a way, that goal typified everything about him; gambling in the box and getting on the end of things.
The 24-year-old has chipped in with important goals both domestically and on the continent
His awareness of how to attack space and his instincts to get himself into goalscoring positions are second to none.
In a rich vein of form, he has scored 11 goals in his last 16 games. Those would be good numbers for a striker, let alone a midfielder. Indeed, he is currently joint top scorer with 14 goals in the Premiership alongside Motherwell forward Tawanda Maswanhise.
That said, there is a theory among Celtic supporters, one which fuels the sense of exasperation around the Swedish international, that he still misses too many chances.
It’s not strictly correct, though. Data from Huddle Statsbomb shows that Nygren is out on his own as the SPFL’s top performer when it comes to xG over-performance.
In other words, he’s scoring more goals than he actually should. So all the noise about squandering opportunities doesn’t really paint a true picture of Nygren’s contribution to Celtic this season.
There has been so much focus on what he apparently doesn’t do, rather than what he definitely does do. Data-driven analytics in football will never float everyone’s boat, of course, but they are useful in disproving some theories and narratives.
Nygren was signed for a fee of just £1.7million from Danish side FC Nordsjaelland last summer. That’s peanuts in the grand scheme of things.
With several clubs from the English Premier League now circling and watching him on a weekly basis, Celtic will surely bank a hefty profit on that investment
He penned a five-year deal on his arrival in the east end of Glasgow but, if big-money offer was to come in over the summer, his stay in the city could yet be fleeting.
Especially if he can continue to score goals and fire Celtic to the Premiership title. It might be one and done, given that his market value would be somewhere close to its maximum.
Celtic are looking to leapfrog Rangers this weekend and move a step closer to the title
Nygren’s path to the top has not been straightforward. His move from IFK Goteborg to Belgian side Genk in June 2019 did not work out as planned. Still only a teenager, he was loaned out to Heerenveen in Holland, before joining FC Nordsjaelland.
It was during his time at the Danish club that he played alongside Mohamed Diomande and Oliver Antman, two players now lining up on the opposite side of Glasgow’s great divide.
Those experiences in Belgium and Holland could easily have chewed him up at such a young age but, instead, it taught Nygren the value of resilience and mental strength.
His character has undoubtedly been tested at times during a debut season at Celtic which has seen him work under three different managers — Brendan Rodgers, Wilfried Nancy and Martin O’Neill — and amid a maelstrom of off-field chaos.
However, as he heads to Ibrox on Sunday, Nygren is perhaps the one player above all others who continues to carry the flag for Celtic’s title challenge.
He has fought his way through a storm, through a barrage of criticism, the majority of which was unjust, and he has become the team’s most potent goal threat.
One of the lesser-known facts about Nygren is that he is a very good golfer and plays to a single-digit handicap.
Maybe not quite in the same bracket as his Swedish compatriot and former Open champion Henrik Stenson. But, if the Claret Jug is just out of reach, the SPFL Premiership trophy remains firmly in Nygren’s sights.
