BENJI SIEGRIST is in danger of becoming one of football’s great underachievers.
The towering Celtic stand-by keeper hasn’t figured in the first team this season and has dropped to third in the pecking order in Brendan Rodgers’ matchday squad.
Joe Hart has been a fixture at No.1 while Scott Bain got the nod to stand in when the 36-year-old 75 times capped-England international was banned for the Premiership visit to Motherwell where it required a stoppage-time goal from Matt O’Riley to secure the points in a dramatic 2-1 win in September last year.
The veteran netminder, who announced his retirement yesterday as CQN reported, was forced to sit it out after his ludicrous red card in the 3-0 win over Livingston in West Lothian the previous week.
GLOVE RIVALS…Joe Hart and Benji Siegrist have a chat after Celtic’s 3-0 Scottish Cup win over Dundee United at Tannadice in March 2022 – just three months before the Swiss keeper joined the champions.
The nearest Siegrist, who turned 32 last month, got to the action at Fir Park last time out was a place on the substitutes’ bench.
The Swiss shotstopper was snapped up by Ange Postecoglou in the summer of 2022 after coming out of contract at Dundee United and still has 16 months to run on his Parkhead deal.
With Hart stepping down when the current campaign reaches its conclusion on Scottish Cup Final day on the iconic date of May 25, the guessing game for his replacement in now in full swing.
However, the champions may already have the answer within their own ranks.
Siegrist, who has made just two League Cup appearances since arriving in Glasgow, regularly shone in his days at Tannadice and hasn’t disappointed in his only forays at Celtic until Rodgers arrived in June.
It looked as though he was heading for Austria in a loan switch to Sturm Graz in January before the move collapsed after talks.
There will be reasons for the player slipping from the first-team picture, but there is no doubt the 6ft-plus guardian has the all-round ability and quality to make the club think twice about shelling out a huge fee for Hart’s long term-successor.
Siegrist’s fate is literally in his own hands.
