Leaving Celtic will not help Hatate get international recognition.

Earlier on, I wrote about Japan’s performance against Scotland last night. In the build-up to the game, Celtic fans were watching closely to see whether Daizen Maeda would feature, and whether he would be the only Celtic player included in the squad.

I thought Japan were excellent. They dominated comfortably and, on another day, could have been far more clinical in front of goal and run up a bigger margin of victory.

The other name that drew attention in the run up was, of course, Reo Hatate. Hatate did not make the squad, and once again the same tired question is doing the rounds. Can he get into the Japanese national side while playing for Celtic?

The people pushing that argument are, frankly, being lazy. They are also showing a lack of understanding about how the game actually works.

Selection is not about the country a player performs in.

If it were, Maeda would not have earned so many caps while playing here. Kyogo Furuhashi also missed out repeatedly, even during periods when he was one of Celtic’s most effective attackers. Hatate has not been a regular in the Japan squad for some time, so his omission should not have surprised anyone.

Moving away from Celtic did not change Kyogo’s situation either, and despite what some may have believed, it never was going to.

The reason is simple. Neither Hatate nor Kyogo fits the system the Japanese manager wants to play. That is the beginning and the end of it.

There is no magic switch that flicks once a player leaves Celtic and suddenly makes him more appealing. This manager has a very specific way he wants his team to operate, and those players do not align with it. That is why they do not get picked.

We see the same thing elsewhere. Earlier, I spoke about how Steve Clarke structures the Scotland team. Those decisions are not forced on him. They are choices. He prefers a certain shape, a certain balance, and he sticks to it even when it frustrates people watching. The Japanese manager operates in exactly the same way.

This is the key point Celtic fans should take from all of this. Managers build teams in their own image. If a player does not suit that image, he will not play, no matter how talented he is. You can argue all day about whether Kyogo should have been selected on form, and you would have a case, but it does not change the reality.

The manager values system over individuals.

That brings us back to Celtic, because the same principle applies here. We have seen players come in and fail to make an impact, not always because they lacked ability, but because they did not fit the way the manager wanted to play. Some of them would probably have struggled regardless, but others never really had a chance. They did not suit the structure, and so they were left on the fringes.

This is why I keep talking about the manager as the architect. You can assemble as many players as you like, but if they do not fit the blueprint, the whole thing falls apart. It becomes disjointed, ineffective and ultimately unsuccessful. That is exactly where we have found ourselves too often in recent years.

When we look ahead to the next Celtic manager, this becomes even more important. Whoever comes in will inherit a squad that may or may not suit his preferred style. If recruitment is not aligned with his vision, we are setting ourselves up for more of the same. It does not matter how good the players are on paper.

If they do not fit the system, they will not perform.

That is why the recruitment team and the manager must work together. They cannot operate in isolation. They cannot pull in different directions. If they do, the entire club operates at cross purposes, and failure becomes inevitable.

When Brendan Rodgers spoke about pace and power as non-negotiable elements of his team, he was not being awkward. He was outlining the foundations of the style he wanted to build. Compare that to the success under Ange Postecoglou. He had the freedom to bring in players who fit his system, and once he had them, everything clicked into place.

That is the lesson. Recruitment must serve the manager, not the other way around. Throwing players into a squad and asking a coach to make it work is not a strategy. It is guesswork. Some players simply do not fit certain styles, and no amount of talent changes that.

Hatate’s situation with Japan illustrates that perfectly. He will not become a regular under the current manager, and it has nothing to do with playing in Scotland. All he has to do is look at Maeda, who remains a regular selection, to understand that. It comes down to system fit, nothing more.

Leaving Celtic will not change that reality.

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