A number of last season’s Celtic B regulars have made the trip with the senior squad for this week’s training camp in Portugal, per pictures published over the last couple of days.
Brendan Rodgers has promised to ramp up the intensity of pre-season preparations over the next fortnight and these young prospects are getting a big chance to impress the coaching staff alongside established stars at the club.
Reo Hatate, Callum McGregor and Daizen Maeda, amongst other international players, are all back in training today at ‘The Campus’ facility on the sunny Algarve.
Joining them are a group of youngsters, with Rocca Vata, Ben Summers and Bosun Lawal being the most recognisable names. Others have been spotted on Celtic’s Twitter feed today, too. Josh Dede, Daniel Kelly, Mackenzie Carse and Bruno Davidson were all in shots published.
It’s possible more have been included on the trip. We could see evidence of that as more photos and videos are published across official club channels this week. It’ll be a big 12 months for all of them as they look to establish themselves as the next wave of young talent coming through Lennoxtown.
With training games against Portimonense coming on Wednesday and Saturday, it’s also possible some of them could get minutes under their belt at the very start of the new Rodgers era. Those matches won’t be shown live on Celtic TV, but we should get match reports from the media staff travelling with the group.
Even if inclusion on this pre-season trip doesn’t lead to competitive minutes over the next six months, this will have still been a valuable period for these youngsters as they build relationships within the group and earn more trust from the staff.
Hopefully at least one or two of them can start to make a sustained push for minutes in the first-team. Vata, for example, made four appearances last term and it’d be great to see him increase on that game time.
In other news, Carlos Borges, Fabian Rieder and the curious summer Celtic transfer window.
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