Dembele says he only grasped Celtic's scale after leaving Glasgow

Moussa Dembele calls his Celtic spell one of the best parts of his career and says its true scale hit him only after his 2018 move to Lyon.

Moussa Dembele says he only grasped the scale of what he achieved at Celtic once he had left Glasgow. Speaking to the Daily Record, the former striker looked back fondly on his Parkhead years, which he ranks among the best parts of his career.

The French forward is now 30 and plays for Al-Ettifaq in Saudi Arabia. He arrived at Celtic from Fulham in 2016 as a teenager with little public profile, and he views the transfer as a major step given the stature of the club he was joining.

His start could hardly have been more striking. In his first Glasgow derby, a Scottish Premiership fixture against Rangers on September 10, 2016, he scored a hat-trick and quickly became a favourite of the Celtic support. He finished with 51 goals for the club and was a central figure under Brendan Rodgers before departing for Lyon in 2018.

Dembele believes he did good work at Fulham, but he sees Celtic as being on another level. The club is "a giant" and "one of the biggest clubs in the world," he said, and joining represented a big step. Establishing himself there as a young player few people knew, he added, was genuinely special, and something he had felt capable of from a young age.

The move also fulfilled long-held ambitions. Dembele said his dream had been to play for a major club, appear in the Champions League and perform in front of crowds of around 60,000, a dream he suggested is shared by anyone who loves the game. "Playing in Paradise was fantastic," he said of running out at Celtic Park.

Settling in Scotland required one small adjustment. Dembele said speaking English helped him considerably, although the local accent took him roughly a week to ten days to understand. He joked that at Al-Ettifaq, where he plays alongside Jack Hendry, he is now the only person in the squad who can follow what his teammate says.

Dembele also explained why the size of the team's success escaped those living through it. With matches coming every three days, and a Scottish season that ends only for the next one to begin early because of Champions League qualifiers, players and staff never had a natural pause to look back at what the previous campaign had delivered.

That perspective came only with distance. Dembele said it was after leaving Celtic that he recognized how big the achievements were, both for him as a player and for the group as a team. He added that he remembers the entire spell as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, joking that he is not yet old enough for it to fade.

Scotland's next match brings the national team to Hampden Park, where Slovenia visit on Tuesday, October 6, kicking off at 2:45 PM EDT.