Celtic went down to another Champions League hammering on Tuesday night, this time against Atletico Madrid at the Cívitas Metropolitano stadium. The 6-0 defeat could have been far worse for Brendan Rodgers’ side who capitulated after Japan international forward Daizen Maeda was sent off midway through the first half.
Earlier in the day the Celtic B Team were also in action in the Spanish capital and there was money to be won on this best online gambling site, for a heavy Celtic defeat, eventually going down 4-0 to the Atletico Madrid Under 19s side. Like the senior Celtic side they too are at the bottom of their Champions League Youth group on just one point from four games.
However it is the Dutch Champions Feyenoord who head the youth group ahead of Atletico and that will provide the Rotterdam club with some optimism that they are at least producing youth players who are more likely to compete at the highest level in club football in the years to come.
Frankly it has been a long while since Celtic produced a player of real note from the club’s Academy and many of those that look like breaking through seem to head for the exit door as soon as an opportunity arises, a good example of this being Ben Doak who was given a first team break at Celtic and even got some minutes against theRangers, but instead headed to Liverpool where he has certainly shown himself to be a top talent.
Celtic’s problem is probably not being helped by the structure of Scottish football where many Scottish Premiership clubs don’t operate with a reserve side due to financial restrictions and that has resulted in the Celtic B Team that is playing in the Youth Champions League playing their domestic league football in the low level Lowland League, where Celtic actually have to pay for the privilege.
It’s unsatisfactory to say the least and the problem is compounded by the bloated nature of the Celtic first team squad where youth players can see little or no chance of ever getting any first team exposure.
Celtic in recent seasons, since the arrival of Ange Postecoglou as manager in June 2021, has operated a policy of recruiting from markets around the world and as the Australian arrived at Celtic from Yokohama F. Marinos, he was well aware of the top talent in the J-League.
Successful signing from Japan followed with the likes of Kyogo Furuhashi, Reo Hatate and Daizen Maeda all proving to be brilliant signings for Postecoglou while there remains great hope among the Celtic support that Tomoki Iwata will achieve that status in due course.
Postecoglou had previously been the manager at the Socceroos, leading them to Asia Cup glory in 2015 and also to the World Cup in Russia three years later. He was therefore well versed in other so-called developing markets in Asia that Celtic could exploit in the pursuit of top footballing talent at affordable prices.
One country that the Australian, who left Celtic in June 2023 to take the job at Tottenham Hotspur, used to reference in his conversations with the Celtic fan media, was Iran but as yet Celtic have never signed a player from that country.
Aside from the players arriving at Celtic from the J-League Celtic have also signed three players from South Korea and one from Australia while pursuing this Asian signing policy over the past three seasons.
The three South Korean players at Celtic are striker Hyeongyu Oh, winger Hyunjun Yang and midfielder Hyeokkyu Kwon with only the latter still to make an impact at Celtic.
And the Australian is winger Marco Tilio who signed from Melbourne City but has yet to make an appearance due to an injury picked up playing for the Socceroos shortly after putting pen to paper on a five year deal at Celtic.
Incidentally that Tilio signing produced a record fee for a A-League side selling a player to Europe but it looks like being short lived with transfer expert Fabrizio Romano reporting earlier today that Bungesliga giants Bayern Munich are in the process of recruiting the 17 year old winger Nestory Irankunda, from A-League side Adelaide United for a fee of £3m fixed fee plus add-on. He looks like being a top talent in World football in the years ahead and he’s another top Asian talent heading to Europe.
Fastest Bundesliga sprint speed last season: 36.65 km/hr.
17 year old Nestory Irankunda in his first professional A-League start two weeks ago: 37.02 km/hr.
He broke a goalkeeper’s hand with his shot power and he’s 17. He’s going to be worth $100 million one day pic.twitter.com/GfdFys5avY
— Drew Pavlou 柏乐志 🇦🇺🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) November 10, 2023
So are there any other markets in Asia that clubs like Celtic could pay attention to? We’ve already mentioned Iran but are there any more? Well, going back to that Champions League Youth match in Madrid on Tuesday night, we noticed that Atletico had an international full-back in their squad who represents The Philippines and we must admit that football in the Philippines has never really been something we’d considered.
The Atletico player in question is 18 year old Santiago Rublico and the right back already won four international caps with The Philippines.
According to Wikipedia Rublico joined the youth academy of Atlético Madrid at the age of six after he was spotted playing in a park by a youth team coach of the club. He moved to Rayo Vallecano in 2017 and spent five years there playing for different youth teams. On 15 September 2022, Atlético Madrid announced the return of Rublico to the club.
You can just imagine Celtic’s head of recruitment Mark Lawwell reading then checking his own contacts list to see if there’s anything in this as a new market for the Hoops! Maybe Rublico represents a new wave of footballers coming through as ‘soccer’ grows in popularity in the Philippines where previously baseball was the main sport due to the strong American influence?
The only other Philippines player that we can think of is the veteran 33 year-old Birmingham City goalkeeper Neil Etheridge who is currently the captain of the Philippines national side. Etheridge has won 76 caps for his country and presumably there will be many more to follow.
So there could be more Asian success stories coming our way whether from the existing markets that Celtic operate in – Japan, South Korea and Australia or in new markets like Iran or even the Philippines?
