Reinaldo Rueda shares what he told Celtic’s Luis Palma that inspired big Mexico performance

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Luis Palma is the man of the moment at Celtic right now after his two goals for Honduras took down Mexico today.

The Celtic winger has been struggling for minutes under Brendan Rodgers and started Honduras’ CONCACAF Nations League quarter-final against the Mexicans on the bench.

However, brought on for the second half with the scores tied at 0-0, Palma opened the scoring with his first touch of the ball and then sealed the first-leg win with a beautifully placed shot past Guillermo Ochoa.

Palma drew the plaudits from the Honduran media for his goals and his manager Reinaldo Rueda shares what he told the Celtic winger before the big Mexico fixture.

Reinaldo Rueda praises ‘noble’ Celtic winger Luis Palma

The Honduras boss shared a conversation he had with the Celtic winger and explained why he was left out of the last Honduras national squad.

Rueda told Deportes TVC, “Yesterday I had a conversation with Luis and Justin [Arboleda], aware that we had to keep the scoreline and how they could come in to come back in the game. I’m happy with the result thanks to their characteristics.

“The challenge is to know how to assimilate this result. The Mexican national team is a very competitive team. Let this help us to keep believing, to keep growing, we have to support them, without shunning them.

“Luis (Palma) is a very noble guy, but he values his participation in the national team very much. That’s why I preferred that he didn’t come last time and today he came in with a great disposition.”

[Translated with DeepL.com]

The problem for Luis Palma at Celtic

Luis Palma has the ability. Many Celtic fans don’t doubt that. He has already proven that he can be a very fine footballer on his day.

The problem for the Honduran is that despite that, he has two very fine wingers ahead of him in the pecking order in Daizen Maeda and Nicolas Kuhn.

So that means when he gets the chance to impress Brendan Rodgers he has to take it and cannot afford an off day.

Too often Palma looks like he’s disinterested which leads to frustration by the Celtic supporters from the stands and until he can find more consistency, the 24-year-old is going to spend much more time on the Celtic bench moving forward.