Celtic favourite Daizen Maeda sent a late-night message to Japanese colleague Daichi Kamada after his Europa League final victory over Rangers in Seville.
The Bundesliga side ensured Celtic supporters didn’t have to cope with endless taunting and gloating from our foes thanks to last night’s result. Frankfurt overcame Rangers on penalties after coming from behind to draw 1-1.
Kamada would score his penalty and go on to lift the trophy as he stepped up big for his club last night. And after congratulating Maeda on Celtic’s Scottish Premiership title win last week, Daizen returned the favour on social media last night:
In the message, Maeda simply responds to the victory with “Mr Kamada”. The duo have regularly featured together with the Japanese national team in the past and have clearly struck up a good relationship.
Maeda, meanwhile, has had a superb campaign of his own after making his own way to Europe and becoming a title-winner with Celtic. Both players will now play in the Champions League next season and could face each other in the group stages too.
As for Celtic players getting involved in post-match reactions to last night? Let’s just say they’re quite right given some of the nonsense that’s been spouted over the last week.
Frankfurt’s Daichi Kamada delivers as Daizen Maeda laps it up
Last night will have been absolutely heartbreaking for our rivals given the run they had been on in the run-up to the final. Far too many people had them as having already won the competition with major disrespect to Frankfurt.
Just because Rangers overcame Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig in previous rounds doesn’t mean that’s the level they’re currently at. They were the poorer of the 2 teams last night and deserved to get beaten in the end.
From a Celtic perspective, it’s great that we look set to be the only Scottish representative in the UCL group stages. Granted, that hasn’t been confirmed considering our rivals will still have the opportunity to qualify next season as they enter the 3rd qualifying round.
But even so, it becomes a lot more difficult for them. And should they fall at the qualifying hurdle later this summer, then Celtic will have a major advantage over them in more ways than one.
Whether this defeat is the spark that sees some of their best players depart remains to be seen. But throughout the window we’ll be able to offer players the prospect of guaranteed UCL football. Rangers can’t.
So let’s not pretend we didn’t have a stake in last night’s match. Thankfully, we got the result we wanted.
In other news, Giorgos Giakoumakis talks up Kyogo Celtic partnership that would terrify Scottish defences
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