Liel Abada’s agent is set to arrive in Glasgow ahead of talks with the club over his future. Brendan Rodgers revealed that the player had not been involved with the first team for the win against St Mirren in the Cup as he was struggling with the situation at Celtic.
A report from Israeli outlet Sport 5 confirmed that the player’s future in Glasgow was in doubt. It comes after he was absent again in the draw against Kilmarnock.
🍀 “Family is more than football, that’s ultimately where it’s at”
Brendan Rodgers says it is a “possibility” Liel Abada may have to leave Celtic with the winger not in the right frame of mind to play. pic.twitter.com/bbOxNF83IE
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) February 16, 2024
MLS clubs are interested in signing Abada as he looks to leave the club due to the situation. The abuse that the player appears to have been getting on social media from accounts from his homeland for playing for Celtic will likely have been an enormous source of anxiety for the young man. The issue with a sale is that the player signed a long-term contract last summer and the club will likely demand £10m+ for the winger.
There appeared to be rhetoric in the media that Abada was finding it difficult and that clubs were considering a loan. In retrospect, it was probably an accurate reflection of the turmoil that the player finds himself in.
In 112 appearances, Abada has 29 goals and 22 assists. The right winger was a huge part of the Ange Postecoglou era at the club and looked set to kick on under Rodgers but an injury then Israel’s invasion of Gaza increased the noise around the player.
Despite being welcomed back onto the field against Rangers, Abada has not celebrated with the fans at full-time in any games, which suggests that he is struggling to deal with the fanbase showing their support for Palestine.
The framing of this is utterly ridiculous. To imply that Abada’s anxiety must be due to pressure from Israeli social media and nothing to do with the fact that we had a banner saying ‘Victory to the resistance’ the day after October 7th, thereby expressing support for Hamas (not just Palestinians in general) before Israel had even responded to a horrific terrorist attack on innocent citizens, or the fact that we have had flags supporting terrorist organisations, and just the other day had the statement ‘End Zionism’ which to anyone who knows what Zionism actually means, rather than the antisemitic conspiratorial version of it, is a call for at a minimum ethnic cleansing (and practically speaking, genocide), is completely disingenuous.
We have some fans calling for the eradication of his entire nation, and many more who are silent because they don’t want to deal with the hassle of calling out the bigotry of the green brigade. Support for a free Palestine and support for the extremist right-wing theocratic terrorist group Hamas (with an history of murdering their own people) are two very different things. In the same way that you can believe Israel has a right to exist but detest the actions of a right-wing Netanyahu-led government.
This has really shattered my illusion of us as ‘a club for all’. Beyond the above, we’ve made no efforts to call out the rise of antisemitism in the UK. We apparently only care about Jews in terms of what they can do for us on the football pitch. It makes me sick.
Looking at this on a purely football perspective we’re losing a first team player whilst the window for replacing him is closed is extremely disturbing when we’re now the chasing team. I don’t think kuhn is better than abada and Palma on the other side offers nothing imo
Meada isn’t the same player and obviously we lost jota. Johnson is away and obviously Rodgers doesn’t fancy forest. Its a very sad state of affairs. This is worse than the failed 10iar season as we were crap from the beginning that year but this year we had sustainable lead and with so much infighting between the fans and the fans, the fans and the board and the fans and the manager we’re heading for a disastrous season and another summer of discontent
Great post Mr O’ROURKE.