Celtic stars heading back to Glasgow after Asian Cup events

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Celtic struggled once again this weekend in an eventual draw away to Aberdeen, losing momentum in their Scottish Premiership title chase.

Bojan Miovski opened the scoring 50 minutes before a deflected equaliser from Nicolas Kuhn cancelled his curled strike out mid-way through the second half.

Despite the former Germany Under-20 international’s reply, Brendan Rodgers’ men turned in an uninspiring performance for the second week running and will now need to respond against Hibernian on Wednesday.

Absentees are never an excuse for dropping points; however, the Hoops haven’t been helped by the fact several of their first-team players have been on AFC Asian Cup duty.

Hyeongyu Oh and Yang Hyun-jun will be in Qatar for a while longer, following South Korea’s progression to the last four of the competition at the expense of Australia.

Reo Hatate and Daizen Maeda have been present at the tournament with Japan. Unfortunately, the former has picked up a calf injury and will be unavailable for Celtic over the next five to six weeks.

Earlier today, the Samurai Blue were in quarter-final action against Iran and 67 Hail Hail takes a look at events at the Education City Stadium.

Japan exit AFC Asian Cup, Maeda and Hatate will return to Celtic

In dramatic circumstances, Japan were beaten 2-1 by Iran at the AFC Asian Cup, ending Hajime Moriyasu’s hopes of winning silverware in the Gulf region [Guardian].

Hidemasa Morita looked to set Japan on their way in the 28th minute. However, Mohammad Mohebi’s equaliser was followed up by a stoppage-time penalty from Alireza Jahanbakhsh to seal a historic victory for Amir Ghalenoei’s side.

As a result, both Maeda and Hatate will now return to Celtic at some point in the near future, which will offer Rodgers some additional options in his quest to win the Scottish Premiership title.

Hoops attacker Maeda started for Japan in their defeat and obtained a Sofascore match rating of 6.9/10 for his contribution.

During his 67 minutes on the field, the former Yokohama F. Marinos man completed nine out of his 12 attempted passes. At the same time, he also won two aerial duels and half of his challenges on the ground.

Now, he will travel back to Glasgow alongside Hatate, though his compatriot will be focused on recovering from injury.