Celtic players’ World Cup journeys are starting to end.
Daizen Maeda’s Japan were eliminated on Monday evening, losing to Brazil in heartbreaking circumstances.
In fairness to Maeda, he can hold his head high after his performance, which gained recognition across the globe. If it didn’t already appear certain, his exit in the coming weeks now looks inevitable.
The same applies to Arne Engels, who appears to have half of Europe chasing him at this point. So what part have the club got to play in the timing of these sales?
🤦♂️ Still no sign of an agreement for either of these two Celtic favourites to stay…
The season ended on May 23rd 🗓️
The slower Celtic’s transfer business is, the more it hurts Martin O’Neill
Over the last 12 months, both Maeda and Engels have been forced to stay put after lucrative, eleventh-hour bids from Wolfsburg and Nottingham Forest respectively.
To their credit, they both went on to make significant contributions to the league and cup double, justifying their stays.
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Less hard to justify was the position that the club had gotten in both of those transfer windows, where heaps of unfinished business set up two chaotic deadline days.
Brendan Rodgers revealed that Maeda first informed the club of his desire to leave in February last year, 16 months ago.
This is not an argument that Celtic should be more keen to sell their best players, but they absolutely should be more prepared to.
The club navigate transfer windows at a snail’s pace. When a rebuild is as busy as this summer’s is expected to be, this is asking for trouble.
Several weeks before the deadline, Martin O’Neill will take the team into a crucial Champions League play-off. You don’t need a long memory to know what can happen if you go into this under-equipped.
And if the approach for this summer is to “move players out before bringing them in”, we better hope that Maeda and Engels’ futures are sorted out quickly.
It has already been reported in Belgium that Engels wanted to sort his future before returning to pre-season with Celtic. This didn’t end up being the case.
Extended waits for incomings and outgoings will be equally impactful for O’Neill’s chances of a good start to the season.
And as we enter July without a single signing under our belt, the direction (and speed) of travel is already clear.
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