Celtic’s Marian Shved makes rare appearance in Ukraine-Estonia clash

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Ukraine vs Estonia took place tonight at the Slavutych Arena, and one Marian Shved made an appearance too.

The rarely-see Celtic talent came on for the final 20 minutes of the friendly encounter, which finished 1-0 to Ukraine. The goal was scored by Roman Bezus, with Shved on the pitch at the time of it.

It’s a big boost for the Celtic star. Shved, after all, has played only twice for the Hoops this season. The rest of the time, the wide-man has either been on the bench or out of squads altogether – mostly the latter. Shved has only appeared on the bench on three further occasions (Transfermarkt).

Yet he’s clearly valued back home. It’s worth remembering that the Karpaty Lviv man came over to Celtic as the third top-scorer in Ukraine at the time. He smashed home a fine 15 goals in 26 appearances last season for Karpaty – a stunning return for a wide player (Transfermarkt).

Shved was surprisingly a part of the Celtic squad against Ross County almost a month ago. Since then, however, he’s missed six further matchday squads. Tonight’s inclusion against Estonia is at least confirmation that he doesn’t have any injury knocks.

His appearance tonight also adds to his only previous international outing against Turkey back in November 2018. Hopefully he takes some confidence from what’s been a positive night for him.

Next two months will be telling for Shved

As for his Celtic career – if he’s ever going to start making appearances, they should start to arrive over the next month and a half.

Celtic have 11 games between now and the end of the year. As it stands, James Forrest is the only natural right-winger we have available. Jimmy has been a constant under Lenny, but he surely can’t be expected to play every single one of those games.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see a spot for Shved open up in the team from time to time over the next seven weeks.

There remains real intrigue over what he can bring to the side. For one reason or another, he just hasn’t made any sort of impact. His lack of appearances even in matchday squads makes his absences even more mysterious.

Lennon hasn’t really given a reason in the past for constantly overlooking Shved. However, after a morale-boosting cameo with his national team tonight, we’ll all be hoping we can start seeing him produce in green-and-white.