Celtic are well underway with their preparations for the new 2026/27 Premiership season.
Shaun Maloney, alongside the rest of the coaching staff, are at the heart of the plans, with the former winger now able to get a good look at the talent coming through the Celtic academy.
Several youngsters are featuring in pre-season, including Liam Kennedy, who impressed against Shelbourne, as Maloney has claimed that some of the B team players have found it ‘really difficult.’
Ahead of Celtic’s clash against Sporting in Lisbon on Tuesday evening, Maloney sat down with the club’s channel to discuss all things going forward.
Maloney explained that the ‘intensity’, and the fact that for many of the young guns, this is their first or second pre-season of their careers, is a reason behind their struggles in Portugal.
- READ MORE: Celtic’s new set-piece coach Ross Grant explains what the players have been working on in pre-season
What’s the point of Celtic’s Academy?
Should Celtic just give it up as the club seem incapable of making the Academy work.
‘Intensity’ and lack of exposure reasons behind Celtic youngsters’ pre-season difficulties
Maloney: “For the players, I would imagine, it has been quite difficult. We have done a lot of sessions now. We have different sorts of players. We have more of the senior first-team players. We have a lot of the B team boys, and a lot of boys who have come back to us from loans.
“I think the younger ones have found it really, really tough. But it has been good. It has. Some of the young players – it’s the first time I have seen them up close for a prolonged period, so it has been good.”
Celtic Player presenter: “When you say it has been tough. Is that because it has been so hot and so intense that it’s a standard kind of thing? The quality of the first team.”
Maloney: “Maybe the intensity of these young lads. We have a fair few of them here. Some of the 17-year-olds. We have quite a lot of them.
“But I would say the same with the senior guys. I think it’s more like a cumulative kind of thing. We have done a lot of double sessions. Double sessions before we came, even to Ireland. We have travelled and things like that.
“But that’s pretty normal with pre-season, the amount of sessions that we get in. I think everyone is sort of – as we get to the stage of the Portugal camp, I would imagine everyone has got to that sort of – they are quite fatigued.
“But it is harder for the younger lads. They have had one pre-season in their career, which was last year when they were 16. You have the step up in intensity, and the level of play.”
This is a good sign…
If Maloney had come out and stated that the players were finding it pretty easy, then that would be a worry.
This is a positive sign that the players, especially the young ones, are finding it difficult because it proves the coaching staff are putting them through their paces, and some!
Expect to see a fair few of them feature for the rest of pre-season, and hopefully, that road will lead them to the first team.
Colby Donovan broke through last season, albeit because of injuries, and he proved that he belonged on such a pressured stage.
Hopefully, with Martin O’Neill in the dugout, he won’t be afraid to provide a few of these young guns a chance because it’s high time Celtic started to use their academy a lot more!
Or else, the young players trying to come through are only at the club to get a pre-season under their belt and experience what it’s like training at that level.
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