When Kieran Tierney injured his foot at Kilmarnock on Saturday the natural replacement would have been Emilio Izaguirre.
The Honduran started the season as Celtic’s first choice left-back but when Tierney got injured Izaguirre was in training thousands of miles away with his national side.
February 13th at home to Ross County was the last time that the 29-year-old made the bench for Celtic with his hoops career going into free-fall since Tierney grabbed his chance.
Despite the tightness of the Premiership title race Izaguirre was allowed to join up with his international squad last Monday to prepare for two World Cup qualifiers with El Salvador.
After losing their opening qualifying matches to Canada and Mexico, Honduras really need to take full points from the games with El Salvador away on March 25 and at home on March 29 if they are to stay on course for a third consecutive appearance at the World Cup Finals.
It was during the 2010 finals in South Africa that Izaguirre came to the attention of a bigger audience with Celtic tracking his development during the qualifying campaign.
The £800,000 fee paid to bring the pacey left-back to Celtic was money well spent with Izaguirre stepping into a problem position and quickly making it his own.
Shortly into his second season in Scotland he suffered a broken ankle playing against Aberdeen and never quite got back to the devastating form that swept him to the Player of the Year awards in 2011.
Last season Izaguirre linked up effectively with Anthony Stokes for a while but despite his attacking instincts he has fallen out of favour with Ronny Deila with a summer transfer on the cards.
While his successor, Tierney goes from strength to strength, it seems that Izaguirre’s Celtic career is virtually over with only an emotional farewell before he departs on a permanent basis.
