Why Celtic’s best summer signing is already in the building.

As with most transfer windows, you are either looking back at the last guys signed or looking forward to the next ones.

For a couple of weeks, the focus has been on Baur and Hassan because they were the last two through the door. Before that it was Kasper Høgh, but before Kasper it was Camilo Duran, and with the signings since staggered across weeks and weeks of waiting, a lot of people seem to have overlooked the fact that Celtic had already bought a Champions League goalscorer who then scored in every one of his pre-season friendlies.

My bet is that nobody is going to forget Camilo Duran’s name again.

People are not going to forget the first piece of business in this window which cost Celtic significant money because Duran is a comer. He’s a keeper. He may very well turn out to be the best player we have signed this summer, and ironically he probably got the least fanfare because he was first. Every signing after him took a little more of the spotlight away.

Well, he has taken it back now.

Duran has announced himself as a major talent in exactly the way a major talent should. He scored goals on the Champions League stage and must be gutted that he will not be returning to that competition this season, but he has already made clear that he intends to keep scoring in the Europa League and that he has no regrets about moving to Celtic.

This guy is the real deal.

He is the player we are all going to start looking towards when we need somebody to make the magic happen, because he has already shown that he can do it.

Don’t get me wrong here, I think all four of the main signings have real quality. I think they have all added something good to the team, and once they are all up to speed and fully integrated into their roles, I think we could see something very special indeed. But they are all going to have to be used properly.

Kasper was grossly misused in Austria, and that is one of the reasons we did not see him at his best. Once we have the proper balance in this squad, and surely we will get some signings this week to help provide it, I think we will start to see what both he and the others can really do.

But without any doubt, Duran has already shown us.

He is also an interesting player because his route to this point was hardly conventional. He spent time playing at a poor level in leagues which would barely register with most supporters here before Qarabag took a chance on him. What a payoff they got for it: a significant transfer profit and a player who scored goals for them in the biggest club competition on earth.

There is something encouraging in that story because it reminds us that the big scouting systems are not foolproof. There are still players out there in the right age groups who have yet to peak, probably plenty of them playing in leagues most of us have barely heard of, and the argument for widening Celtic’s scouting operation makes itself.

We need to be able to spot these guys before everybody else does.

When you watch somebody like Duran play, you can understand why our board believes there are unpolished gems out there who can be acquired relatively cheaply. To a certain extent, they are right. Those players absolutely exist.

But you have to make a real effort to find them.

They are not simply going to present themselves at the front door of Celtic Park, and it is nonsense to suggest that we somehow have to sign these players before they have established themselves at all or before anybody has heard of them. Celtic did not sign Duran before he scored Champions League goals. We signed him after he had shown he could do that. That is the point.

We should be looking for players like him everywhere. We should be scouring the planet for them, and in many cases, they will already have left clues everywhere about what they are capable of. I think often about Odsonne Edouard.

Big Eddy was a signing Celtic made before he had properly established himself as a first-team player anywhere, but if you looked beneath the surface there was nothing mysterious about his talent. His record at youth level was extraordinary.

He had scored relentlessly in PSG’s reserve and academy sides, had an excellent scoring record across France’s youth international teams and had been one of the outstanding players at international youth tournaments.

It was all there for anyone who cared to look.

That is the thing about these players. On the surface, sometimes it appears that they have not done very much. Dig a little deeper and you see the accomplishments which explain why the talent is real.

Everyone who had watched Edouard score goals for France’s Under-17s, Under-18s and Under-19s, or watched what he was doing inside PSG’s academy system, knew there was a formidable footballer there.

Celtic did not simply throw a dart at a board and get lucky.

The evidence existed, and once he walked through the door the coaches at Celtic quickly understood what kind of talent they had. Duran is different in terms of his route through the game, but the principle is similar.

He earned his way to Celtic and to this move.

He had to fight for recognition. Clubs had to be willing to take a chance on him. But once he found his feet, developed physically and technically and began producing at a higher level, there was only one direction his career was going.

If Celtic had waited another year, I don’t think we would have got anywhere near him. Another season of Champions League goals, another year of development and another year of bigger clubs watching him, and some team from one of Europe’s top five leagues would almost certainly have come along and taken him beyond our reach.

That is where Celtic has to be smart.

The perfect time to buy these players is not before anybody knows whether they can play. It is in that narrow window after the evidence starts becoming undeniable but before the price catches up with it.

That is what Celtic appears to have done with Duran. But once we get players like this, there is another part of the strategy which matters just as much.

Keep them long enough to become something here.

This is the kind of player we should be trying to turn into a Celtic icon, not somebody whose departure we start mentally preparing for the moment his transfer value rises.

Develop him. Polish him. Turn him into the finished article.

Then let us see some of his best football in a Celtic shirt so that when the day eventually comes for him to leave, nothing he does afterwards surprises us because we have already seen the full range of it here.

I genuinely believe we are watching somebody with that level of potential.

He looks like a player who could eventually play almost anywhere.

I am a big Kasper Høgh fan and have been for a long time, but you can already see that Duran has all the ingredients of a Celtic cult hero. He is going to become a favourite with this crowd for as long as he remains here because it is not only the goals.

It is his all-round play. It is his attitude. It is his movement.

It is the work he does for the rest of the team.

It is the sense that something could happen whenever he gets involved. Those are the players supporters fall in love with.

I don’t know what Celtic will do over the next few days. I hope it is a lot. I don’t necessarily expect that, but I still hope for it.

What I do know is that the business we have already completed has brought four very good footballers into the club, and I am genuinely excited to see what all of them can do once they have settled completely and this squad has the balance it needs.

But I already know who I think is the pick of the bunch. I think he is the player opposition defenders are going to absolutely hate seeing on the team sheet.

Because whatever else Celtic gets done before this window closes, Camilo Duran has already announced himself.

And I have a feeling this is only the beginning.

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