BRENDAN RODGERS is planning crunch talks with Daizen Maeda after the Japanese ace revealed he was on the brink of quitting Celtic on deadline day.
According to last season’s 33-goal hitman, he was on his way to an unnamed club before any possible shift was blocked by the Hoops hierachy because they couldn’t find a replacement.
Maeda, who has just less than two years to run on his contract, is due at the Lennoxtown Training HQ today following international duty.
DOWN AND OUT…Daizen Maeda wishes the ground would swallow him up after his late miss in Kazakhstan that contributed heavily to Celtic’s Champions League exit.
The 27-year-old speedster won multiple Player of the Year honours for his exploits in the previous campaign, but his form has dipped alarmingly and he has claimed just a solitary strike – in the 4-1 Premier Sports League Cup win over Falkirk – this time around.
To compound his mystifying dip in the scoring stakes, he blew a glorious late effort against Kairat Almaty that would have settled the Champions League encounter in Kazakhstan.
He then squandered the deciding penalty-kick as the Hoops saw a £40million windfall disappear into the horizon.
Maeda, who was signed by Ange Postecoglou from J-League Yokohama F. Marinos for £1million in January 2022, had been linked with clubs in England, Germany and Turkey before Celtic vetoed any chance of a move.
Now Rodgers will have a meeting with the player as a matter of urgency as he prepares his squad for Sunday’s game against Kilmarnock at Rugby Park, according to a report in the Scottish Sun.
WHAT’S GOING ON? A puzzled-looking Daizen Maeda.
Maeda, who has scored 63 goals in 283 games for the champions, explained his late arrival to the international pool when he told the Japanese media: “I had been talking to Celtic until the last day, but it didn’t work out.
“I had received an offer and I had been telling the club I wanted to take the next step. “But Celtic hadn’t been able to make any good reinforcements, so they couldn’t let me leave.”
Tellingly perhaps, Maeda, who failed to score in his last five outings of the 2024/25 season, added: “There were some things that I had agreed to personally, so I wanted to take on the challenge.
“I’d been talking to the club since before the end of the previous season.”
