The Cynic summed it up best when they made this observation: “Writing articles about players leaving off the back of tweets is where journalism is nowadays unfortunately.”
The tweet from a Qatar based outlet claimed that Jota was set to leave Celtic to head to Saudi Arabia was immediately jumped upon by all the mainstream media and indeed many fan media sites. The respected @aboutceltic account shared the tweet then deleted it but the cat was well and truly out of the bag and the latest Celtic transfer rumour had its arms and legs.
They claimed:
Sources for the cup:
The Saudi club #الاتحاد agrees with the Portuguese player #جواو_فيليبي on all terms and details of the contract to join its ranks during the current summer transfer period; And a few minor details remain with his club
Earlier in the week, it was Reo Hatate who was the subject of the same sort of speculation but that didn’t last very long as the player’s agent immediately closed it down saying that Hatate is staying in Europe, yeah it would have been nicer if he’d said Celtic.
Of course releasing these sort of tweets, even of there is no substance to them whatsoever, still gets people talking about football in Saudi Arabia, something that hasn’t really happened before to this extent.
And IF Jota lacks the footballing ambition and decides that’s where he wants to go for the money then Celtic will have their own financial requirements which would presumably not be a problem for whichever club is after the Celtic star who last summer signed a long term contract at the club.
The record transfer fee achieved by Celtic is the £25m received from Arsenal for Kieran Tierney in August 2019. That record would have to be broken to make Celtic consider it as a deal worth doing – iF it is on the table. And remember Benfica almost certainly will have a sell-on clause that needs to be factored in.
But for now we’ll take this one with a pinch of sand.
