Daizen Maeda: Celtic’s Star Of The Rising Sun Has Just Been Noticed By Europe.

If you had been compiling a list of Celtic’s “bankable assets” before today, would you have included Daizen Maeda on it? I would have, but he is a player who I thought would have to achieve a higher profile first. I’ve been singing him praises for months now as the snarks and the criticisms in other places continued to grow in volume.

A lot of people can’t see what this guy brings to the team, but it’s been obvious to me since I saw his first game. For one thing, he exhausts opposing players mentally and physically.

He is impossible to pin down. He moves at lightning speed. He exploits space. He drags defenders out of position.

He sometimes doesn’t look like a natural finisher though.

Be happy at that. If he was we’d already know his name and we’d know it from some other European league.

In Germany, they already know the Japanese market almost as well as Celtic seem to. A couple of their other stellar performers from today already play there, and Maeda would too if he was a natural born goal scorer because he has everything else.

If you watch the guy with a neutral eye, and you’re not just looking for him to score with every chance he gets in front of the target, you can see what we’ve got here. It’s not like he never gets in amongst the goals either. He does. He also lays them on for others.

He works tirelessly. He is the epitome of what a genuine team player should be.

I love the guy, and I know now that other clubs will be sending scouts north to watch him, and they will know exactly what we have on our hands when they do. Interest in this guy is going to go through the roof, particularly from England … but his performance today was such that you can bet the Germans will be taking a good look at him too.

I’m not concerned about losing him, because I don’t think that we will.

Something tells me he likes playing for Ange and will be here as long as the boss is. But you can add him now to the list of players for whom there is likely to be big interest and who would attract a big offer.

That’s the thing about the World Cup, it’s the biggest stage there is.

And this was Maeda’s coming-of-age moment.

I am dead chuffed not only for him but for us, and for the manager in particular.

He saw it before any of us did.