The positive Celtic news as foreign tour curse strikes again; three options after Wolves pull out

Add as preferred source on Google

Celtic will no longer be playing Wolves in South Korea after our tour curse struck again.

Brendan Rodgers’ Hoops were due to face the Premier League side in Suwon on July 26 as part of our pre-season tour of Asia.

However, the match against Julen Lopetegui’s side will no longer be happening after Wolves announced they would be pulling out.

In a club statement, they said: “With great regret, Wolves can confirm that the club has been forced to withdraw from its pre-season fixtures and tour to South Korea next month.

“The withdrawal from the scheduled matches comes after numerous financial and logistical obligations were not met by the tour’s promoter, Stadium X/USG.”

It’s the second time in around a year that a foreign Celtic tour has had a team publicly withdrawing.

Few can forget our rivals Rangers pulling out of the Sydney Super Cup in April 2022, following fan backlash at being the support act to Ange Postecoglou and Celtic.

We are also due to face Yokohama F. Marinos and Gamba Osaka in Japan this summer and the positive news is that we don’t seem to have any issues with those fixtures.

In their report, the Daily Record say they understand there are “no issues” and we are now “looking at contingency plans.”

So what could those be? Well, Celtic do seem to have a few options moving forward.

We could try to find other opposition for a match in Korea. Playing in the country seems to be a big deal for the club’s marketing, especially while we have Hyeongyu Oh on our books.

Italian side AS Roma are also said to be pulling out of the trip to Korea (Roma Press). They were due to face Wolves and home side Incheon United, so perhaps we could now take on the K League 1 side instead.

Equally, we could decide that Korea simply isn’t worth the hassle right now, which may be the most likely scenario if Wolves and Roma are no longer there.

The Asian tour could consist of just two matches, but we could also add another last-minute fixture in Japan to take our total back up to three.

It will be interesting to see what Celtic do. Expect to hear some news over the coming days.

In other news, here’s every television subscription you will need to watch Celtic next season