You’ve read this story before, Liel Abada in an injury scare while training with his national side. Yes it’s an old story but it come back again as history repeats itself to present Celtic with another international break problem with yet another player looking at a period on the sidelines.
Liel Abada, like all his Celtic teammates, will be desperate to be fit and ready to play when the Champions League gets underway a week on Tuesday in Rotterdam but if reports coming out of the Israeli camp ahead of their Euro24 qualifier today against Romania, the winger is going to be facing a fitness race if he’s going to be ready to play against Feyenoord on 19 September.
Apparently Abada has suffered a quad problem while training with Israel and pulled up at the end of the session. The Celtic winger will now have a scan but will have to sit out the game against Romania.
The Israel manager broke the bad news. Alon Hazan said: “He felt a pinch in his muscle.”
Abada started at Ibrox on the latest Beautiful Sunday and was very unlucky not to get both an assist and a goal – he enjoys scoring in Glasgow Derby matches, as you know. Despite transfer interest in Abada in the transfer window, with Portuguese side Sporting CP making a £7m bid which Celtic rejected, Abada was happy to sign a new long term contract running through to 2027 with the Scottish Champions.
Speaking to Celtic TV, Abada said: “I’m really happy to sign the new contract. Now we have a target for this season and we’re looking forward. The most important thing for me is to improve every day and in every game. I want to get better for the team to achieve our targets.
“Every time I score for this club is really amazing. To score in Celtic Park is always special and the atmosphere is amazing. Hopefully I can show more this season for everyone and I will try and get better for the team.
“Every time you play at a club like Celtic you have a lot of great players and a lot of competition.”
Fingers crossed for good news on the scan results. The last thing that Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers needs at the moment is more players joining the injury list which he was hoping would be shortening with players like Oh and Reo Hatate getting back to full fitness. Oh was actually ahead of schedule and was able to contribute from the bench on that Beautiful Sunday Celtic victory at Ibrox last weekend.
The main problem we are currently facing is how injuries could impact our CL squad.
We already are facing Welsh having to miss out with being unavailable for to much of the campaign.
We aren’t blessed with coping with injuries due to the 8 home grown player rule that can have an affect upon us, with limited options.
Hopefully we don’t find ourselves in a position of chasing within a group, due to missing big players for ourselves, which would be a concern at the moment.
Hopefully the abada injury isn’t to concerning, but looking at potentially 4 starting players missing for the opening match is hardly ideal preparation either.
Still when this situations arise, it’s down to other players to step up with the opportunity given?
Still remain unconvinced that many might be able for that step up in class that’s needed in CL and a potential problem that will be overcome going forward.
But for the start of this campaign, we may well looking at being pleasantly surprised, by what our least experience players have to offer at this level