Thomas Gravesen 'was No 1 Call of Duty player' in the world and 'swindled Celtic players out of cash'

Before hanging up his boots, former Denmark international Thomas Gravesen would regularly use pre-season to hone his skills on Call of Duty – and he was pretty good at it.

Gravesen, who was known by his teammates as ‘Mad Dog’, played in the Premier League for Everton, had a stint at Celtic, and managed to find the time to make 66 senior caps for his national side.

He even played for Real Madrid, making a shock departure from the Toffees in 2005 before joining Los Blancos for just £2.5 million.

While he may have said farewell to football 16 years ago, the controversial midfielder has since been living the high life and has made sure his name hasn’t been out of the headlines for too long.

Gravesen is reportedly worth a staggering £100 million, thanks to lucrative investments and lives in a gated community with his model girlfriend, Kamila Persse.

He’s also a regular at the Las Vegas pool tables — a place where he has put his honed gaming skills to good use. In fact, it was revealed in 2023 that during his Celtic days, the now 49-year-old used to be a bit of a pool shark.

Appearing on the Undr The Cosh podcast, former Hoops teammate Paul Caddis revealed some behind-the-scenes knowledge to the podcast hosts.

Caddis said: “He used to bring us all in, all the young lads, ‘25 quid a head’. He would only play for money and we never knew why. He’d be like ‘everyone put their money in’. Used to be like £250 sat in there. ‘Two minutes lads’.

“And he’d run down the stairs at Celtic Park,” Caddis continued to reminisce.

“We’d be looking out the window, he’d open up his boot and he brought out this f***ing Ronnie O'Sullivan signed pool cue, snooker cue, screw it up.”

Caddis then laughed that the young members of Celtic's team would have to use “run of the mill horrendous” pool cues while Gravesen would swan around with “this shiny thing.”

“He just cleaned up, it was unbelievable,” he continued. “He used to take all the money and all. He was a f***ing multi-millionaire."

Image credit: Getty

Caddis also revealed that instead of going away with the lads in the Scottish Premiership pre-season, the midfielder would return home to Denmark.

He said: “He used to go back [to Denmark] in pre-season and stay at either his mum’s or his dad’s [house] in an attic probably about the f***ing size of this full table. In this little attic, a tiny room for six weeks, just used to sit on his PlayStation.

“He was like number one or number two for Call of Duty at one point,” he added.