Fotbollskanalen<\/a>, admits that both West Ham and Fulham showed an interest in taking him to England while he was under contract with Norwegian giants Rosenborg.<\/p>\nInstead, due to concerns about whether he possessed the defensive awareness at that stage to stave off predators in the most unforgiving of habitats, Lustig opted to join Celtic on a free transfer at the beginning of 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the chance to go to West Ham and Fulham when I was at Rosenborg,\u201d Lustig says. \u201cBut they were two teams that were in the Championship one year, then the Premier League one year, and [often] fought at the bottom.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that time, I really couldn\u2019t defend. I couldn\u2019t go there and just defend. Then, I would be completely depressed. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I chose, it was really that I needed to go to a team that fought at the top and won a lot of games, because that [suited] the offensive game I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
While West Ham or Fulham presumably would have offered Lustig a far greater salary than the one on offer in Scotland, all he cared about at the time was finding a club which suited his strengths. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really only in the last few years that I started to focus on money. [Close to retirement] you feel, \u2018now, it\u2019s good to collect the last few marbles\u2019,\u201d adds the now 38-year-old, who played just shy of 100 games for Sweden between 2008 and 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore, I didn\u2019t really care about the salary in the envelope. It was more that I was going to a club that played offensive football.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lustig would go on to win eight successive Scottish Premiership titles north of the border. Celtic taking full advantage of Rangers\u2019 struggles on and off the pitch during a period of dominance unprecedented even in a usually lopsided division.<\/p>\n
Faubert, meanwhile, was celebrating Wembley success with West Ham while fellow right-back Lustig lifted the first of many titles in the green and white of Celtic.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Allardyce] knew how to take the best of the players,\u201d recalls Faubert, who famously had a short-lived loan spell at Real Madrid in 2009. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am a fighter, and he\u2019s a guy who likes winning. [And \u2018Big Sam\u2019] knows how to talk to you, how to make you feel like you\u2019re the best player. He knew the league totally. It was a great experience with him. He was tough on the pitch but so cool on the outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe relationship I had with the fans was crazy. I never felt a connection like that before or after. As a player, I always felt like I was ready to die on the pitch. And I think that is the mentality of the club and the fans, so I\u2019m still a big fan, for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Ricardo scored against Blackpool, I think that was one of the best experiences I ever had on the pitch. The atmosphere and noise was incredible, and after knowing how the fans felt when we went down, we knew what it meant to them to go back up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an incredible day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Julien Faubert has extremely fond memories of his time in the Championship at West Ham United, and not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,18282,596,127543,127544,1614,9003,85],"class_list":["post-205599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celtic-fc","tag-football","tag-julien-faubert","tag-mikael-lustig","tag-premier-league","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Celtic](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-985259976.jpg\")
Photo by Clive Rose\/Getty ImagesCeltic hero Mikael Lustig explains why he rejected West Ham United transfer<\/p>\n