At a time when things at Celtic are peaceful and calm there is always somebody who wants to suggest that things aren’t quite what they seem, as this time it is the Israeli manager who is throwing uninformed ignorant nonsense into the mix.
He has a theory for why Liel Abada doesn’t play more games and it’s this; Abada doesn’t want to sign a new deal with the club. How he knows this is beyond me. Abada has said he’s not thinking about that.
If he had rejected a deal or didn’t want one I think we would know because at the end of the day the media splattered Giakoumakis and Juranovic’s contract stories all over the back pages and I feel sure that our club still has a leak.
That’s an issue for another day, but for the moment I do wish people who actually don’t know a thing about what’s going on inside Celtic would stop surmising that they do based on fragments of information and their own inner logic.
Celtic rotates the squad.
What did Ange say recently? There are clubs you can go to and be a guaranteed starter, but you will not be playing at the top level of the game, and you will not be playing for Celtic. That’s as definitive a statement as you’ll get. Everyone at Parkhead knows it. Everyone buys into it. There is no issue here to speak of. We are a squad, not a showboat for individuals.
What in God’s name is a national coach doing expressing a view like this in the first place? Celtic should be furious about it and putting in a complaint with the Israeli FA.
We have been good to them over the years. We’ve played fair and straight with the players we had here, and this is an utterly unwarranted intrusion into an area that’s none of their business.
No national coach should be talking openly about what he believes – what he believes, not what he knows – about how a club handles players or why.
If he stuck to doing his own damned job maybe they wouldn’t have lost to Malta and Cyprus last year.
I believe Celtic FC is leak proof. Agents are the ones who start uncertain truths. They get a good commission from the transfer fee. It’s like testing the waters. Flagging the possibilities. Good question James. How would he know? Even the Fabulous Roman gets it wrong and agents use him for their own benefit. If true, why didn’t the prick hold his tongue. It’s nothing to do with him.
I guess he’d only know if either Abada or one of his representatives had said so. But even then, Israel is a very small country. The Israeli football community is minuscule. I can’t imagine it would take very long for this message to get about. You wouldn’t need any structured leak.
To be fair, the coach specifically did not say that he KNEW this. The sentence in question began ‘Maybe’; it was very clearly a speculation. I’m personally not sure that it’s a speculation that makes an awful lot of sense or implies a speaker who’s been watching Celtic all that much. Abada hasn’t been starting all that much because other players have and the team’s been winning. He’s been finishing matches an awful lot and contributing well in the process. Doesn’t make sense when examined closely, but could nevertheless be a theory being passed around behind the scenes in Israel.
National coaches do this kind of thing all the time. O’Neill regularly made comments about clubs’ relationships with players when he was ROI coach (quite a few times just about Everton, as I recall). I get that this example involves an innuendo as well as just a comment about one of his players not getting many minutes. But the thing about opinions, is that no one needs to keep them to themselves. There wouldn’t be any place for a football fan blog in a world where they did. National team coaches can say what they like. How would it be in his interest to say nothing? If it’s based on nothing, it’s based on nothing. Not worth paying attention to. Abada’s the kind of player the club could make a few quid out of, and replace without painstaking difficulty. If this guy is putting him in the shop window, that shouldn’t be a huge problem for Celtic. His contract is not particularly near its end; he’ll fetch a few quid and has helped deliver some success along the way.
If Celtic DID go through with the ridiculous notion of lodging a complaint with the Israeli FA all it would do is highlight how subservient they are to Sevco and the SFA.
The last time I heard Celtic complain about anything it was when the toad Bankier called them racist for pointing out what an absolute lowlife capitalist shut eating scumbag the prick known as ‘Lord’ Livingstone is.
That apart I can’t think of one other instance of them going public on anything, Dermot telling us Sevco was ‘a great club with a long history’ apart.
AWhile I’m on this, does anyone have any idea what happened at the big VAR summit?
The one where Celtic were supposedly making a big ruckus with the SFA about the atrocious video decisions given against us?
Anyone?
According to the Yorkshire Whistler series, if anyone is following that, the big decisions (as curated by a Celtic fan) have largely been very good – either in the match or ironed out accurately by VAR – since the World Cup. The small handful of VAR howlers came before the WC. I’d be interested to know what a summit would bring to light nevertheless. But still…
Thanks, I’ll look into that, and I agree that the decisions have slightly improved since.
But not one word in public about the outcome of the big VAR summit that was being trumpeted for weeks beforehand.
Agree. Suspect that was bluster. Benefit of the doubt: later in the season might given a more reasonable time frame for a review. The sooner you do it, the more you’ll oversample the pre-WC ‘teething’ issues. I appreciate that the WC is an arbitrary line to draw. But it was a break which clarified a few VAR issues more widely. So, not a completely unreasonable line to draw.
He was probably just asked a question and gave an opinion. This then becomes an opportunity to detract from the club by others.