Celtic will have to name their squad for this season’s UEFA competition in the not too distant future.
Brendan Rodgers‘ side will begin their Champions League campaign on 19/20 September, as we aim to improve on last season’s showing in the competition.
The Celtic squad has changed since then and we can expect more departures and arrivals prior to our UEFA opener too.
There has been growing chat about UEFA’s squad registration system in recent times so we thought it would be worthwhile to explain exactly how it will work this season.
It is worth pointing out that there is nothing new being introduced this season. Everything we’re going to talk about has been in place for a number of years.
But it does no harm to remind ourselves. Let’s take a look.
It’s not totally clear when Celtic will need to announce their Champions League squad by.
Last year, the deadline was 11pm on the Friday before the start of the group stage (UEFA). So it seems likely to be Friday 15 September this year.
Article 45 of the UEFA regulations covers squad registration.
It explains that Celtic’s squad will consist of a ‘List A’ and ‘List B’ of players. List B can feature an unlimited amount of players born on or after 1 January, 2002. The likes of Ben Summers and Rocco Vata will be included as part of this.
List A is the more complex one, and also has homegrown criteria which the club must meet.
As per the regulations, Celtic can register a maximum of 25 players on ‘List A’. Eight of those spots are reserved for ‘locally trained players’.
Those eight can be made up of a maximum of four ‘association-trained players’ — a player trained for at least three years as a youngster by another Scottish club — with the rest ‘club-trained players — someone who has trained for at least three years as a youngster at Celtic.
It’s a little confusing. Basically, for ‘club-trained’ think Callum McGregor, James Forrest and Anthony Ralston.
For ‘nation-trained’ think David Turnbull (Motherwell), Greg Taylor (Kilmarnock) and James McCarthy (Hamilton Accies).
So we must name eight of those players in total, with at least four of them having come through the Celtic academy. Failure to name all eight sees the 25-squad number impacted.
For example, if we named only seven ‘locally trained players’ then our total ‘List A’ squad could only be 24-strong.
As the insightful Moravcik67 pointed out recently on Twitter, the manager may have decisions to make for his 17 players who weren’t trained in Scotland.
We’re likely to see a couple of interesting omissions, although the overall squad will still be very strong.
In other news, the Celtic support were treated to some new culinary delights on Tuesday
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
