Watch: Reported Celtic target Daizen Maeda shows electrifying pace, scores hat-trick

By Euan Davidson

November 6, 2021

It’s hard not to get excited about the possibility of Daizen Maeda coming to Celtic.

A player Ange Postecoglou signed for Yokohama F Marinos, Maeda is scoring goals for fun in the J League. Not only that, his pace is terrifying; he’s broken the record for J League match sprints multiple times.

In case you were in any doubt, the possibility of having another player with incredible acceleration and the ability to score goals is a good thing.

And the striker, who Celtic are “confident” of bringing to the club in January [The Times], has done it again. In his latest outing for Yokohama F Marinos, he scored a hat-trick against FC Tokyo [Eurosport].

Impressive, no? But words can’t do justice to the following clip, courtesy of Sacha Pisani:

From 4 seconds onwards, Maeda is a beautiful, bald blur. Taking absolutely no time to reach top speed, he makes the defender tracking him look as if he’s running through treacle.

Then, he almost ruins the finish, but after an initial save, recovers the ball and finds space between three defenders on the line.

Just ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

As we’ve seen, the J League is an excellent market to look at. While it’ll likely be until January that we see whether Celtic’s interest is legitimate, just watch that clip again.

We may have plenty of excellent attacking talent. But if this fella’s available, imagine the damage he’d do in Scotland.

Daizen Maeda is only building interest from Celtic supporters

To be fair, Maeda seemed the more obvious target for Celtic than Kyogo Furuhashi did. Not because he’s better, but the link was more tenable. A Yokohama F Marinos player? Tick. Signed by Ange Postecoglou? Tick. A player in a department we sorely needed new faces? Undoubtedly.

If anything, Furuhashi was a massive coup. Playing alongside Iniesta at Vissel Kobe did his reputation a lot of good, and European clubs were keen on him.

Celtic landed the Japan international, though. And as January gets closer, fans will be desperate to see Postecoglou repeat the trick with Daizen Maeda.

The struggle would be where to play him. Undoubtedly a centre-forward, would you put Kyogo to the left? What about Abada and Jota? Does James Forrest make that an unstoppable trio?

There certainly are questions. It seems unlikely that Maeda would want to come to Celtic as a back-up.

But these are hypotheticals. What’s more exciting is imagining Maeda against Scottish defences in a Celtic shirt.

Just watch that clip again. Good grief.

Read more: “More to give”; Celtic boss backs summer signing for even bigger impact; not Kyogo