Glasgow World’s idiotic “valuation” of Celtic’s samurai is a new low for even that bottom feeding outlet.

Every so often, one of the Scottish tabloids publishes something so astonishingly stupid that it leaves your jaw slack and your mind racing, wondering how such a piece made it past the editor’s desk without someone in the chain of command saying, “Hang on, lads, this is mental.”

Glasgow World—yes, that paragon of top-tier football insight—has managed to outdo even its usual standard of guff with its latest offering.

According to them, Celtic would find a £9.7 million offer for Daizen Maeda hard to turn down. Yeah, really. £9.7 million. Not £19 million. Not £29 million. £9.7. As if we’re running a fire sale on elite-level, Champions League-tested talent. As if our board has decided to start flogging Ferraris for the price of a Fiat Punto.

This article is absurd on its face. But it goes deeper.

Because what’s even more ridiculous—what takes it from laughable to outright farcical—is that the entire valuation rests on our old friends at Transfermarkt; so bad that blogs which want to be on the news aggregators are no longer allowed to use them as a “primary source.”

Think about that. Blogs can’t use them. But numerous mainstream publications still do, and that’s considered perfectly valid. The so-called Wikipedia of football transfer values is so widely mocked and derided that even people who write for it probably take its valuations with a pinch of salt and a stiff drink.

Let’s take a moment to unpack the sheer idiocy here.

Transfermarkt is not an official valuation site. It is a glorified fan-powered database that allows users to edit and adjust player values based on—what, exactly? Their feelings? The vibe in the room? The phases of the moon?

This isn’t a platform rooted in financial analysis, agent insight, or actual market behaviour. It’s the equivalent of estimating the cost of your house based on what a stranger in the pub thinks it’s worth. It’s guesswork dressed up as analytics, and it is routinely so far off the mark that using it as the basis for serious discussion should disqualify you from any adult conversation on football.

It’s the site which had Ryan Kent as the most valuable player in Scottish football for near enough three years. Yes, that same Ryan Kent who left Ibrox on a free transfer and who has played a grand total of 19 games in two seasons in Turkey afterwards. It’s a joke. It is impossible to take this rubbish seriously.

In the case of Celtic, Transfermarkt consistently lowballs our players’ values to the point of insult. According to them, Matt O’Riley’s market value was under £10 million when Atletico Madrid came sniffing around. Brighton paid three times that.

The real problem with Transfermarkt isn’t just that it’s inaccurate—it’s that its inaccuracies are skewed. Skewed in one particular direction: downwards, for Scottish football (yes even accounting for the Kent rubbish) while English Premier League reserves can be valued at £15 million without having kicked a ball in the first team.

International players with Champions League experience at Celtic are valued at half that. It’s a joke, and not a particularly funny one. Maeda being valued at £9.7 million valuation is not just wrong—it’s insultingly wrong.

This is a guy who plays regularly for the Japanese national team, one of the best and most technically disciplined sides in world football. He has played in the World Cup. He has played in the Champions League, where he has consistently performed against elite opposition. He is lightning-fast, tireless, tactically astute, and capable of playing in multiple forward positions.

In terms of his work rate and pressing ability, there are few players in Europe who do it better. That alone makes him worth a fortune in the modern game. Add in the fact that Celtic don’t need to sell, that he’s under contract, that he’s happy here, and that any suitor would need to pry him away… and you’ve got the ingredients for a transfer fee that starts well north of £25 million.

You could imagine Maeda being a perfect fit for a Premier League team like Brighton or Brentford—clubs that have a reputation for buying smart and paying what it takes. Do you think Brighton would baulk at a £25 million fee for a player like Maeda? Not a chance. Nor would many of the others.

So this notion that we’d find £9.7 million “hard to turn down” is not just out of touch—it’s offensive.

Some people might wonder why we bother getting worked up about nonsense like this. Who cares what a tabloid says? Who cares what Transfermarkt says? Well, we do. Because narrative matters. Because perception matters. And because over time, repeated falsehoods become received wisdom if they go unchallenged.

Celtic have been under-valued for years in the media. But that’s changing. Rodgers himself has said you buy the player, you don’t base the price tag on the standard of the league and this has helped us get big sums.

Take Jota. Sold for £25 million. That was a statement. Same with O’Riley; when we were offered £18 million we didn’t take it because we knew he was worth more. The days of selling our best players for relative peanuts should be over.

So when a rag like Glasgow World tries to reset the bar by quoting £9.7 million for Maeda as if it’s reasonable, we have to call it out. We have to push back.

Because that kind of stuff seeps into the discourse. It gets parroted on phone-ins. It turns up in Sky Sports graphics. It ends up in transfer gossip columns where lazy journalists copy-paste figures without checking sources. Before you know it, some club from the English Championship is actually lodging a £10 million bid and expecting us to say yes. Because “that’s what he’s worth.”

It’s dangerous. It’s stupid. And it’s completely avoidable.

Which brings us back to Glasgow World.

What sort of editorial process allows this stuff to get published? Did anyone say, “Wait a minute, is this valuation realistic?” Everyone knows it’s not. Everyone knows Celtic would laugh a bid that size out of the room.

This isn’t journalism. It’s clickbait masquerading as insight.

It’s lazy, it’s misleading, and it undermines the work of people trying to bring proper analysis to Scottish football. But then, that’s the state of a lot of the media in this country—high on noise, low on standards.

If Glasgow World and its so-called writers want to run with fantasy figures, maybe they should move into horoscopes. Or produce the transfer rumours for FIFA Career Mode. But please, for the love of God, leave the real football coverage to people who know what they’re talking about.

The next time someone wants to know what a Celtic player is worth, here’s a novel idea: don’t check Transfermarkt. Watch him play. Look at the sums players of a similar level are going for all across Europe, and understand that Celtic has the financial muscle not to even entertain bids which are a complete insult.