To China and beyond

November 5, 2013

Categories: Fans

This week, we have been reading reports of Celtic and other Scottish football clubs agreeing a deal to ensure that some of our games will be shown in China.

I have to say that I think this a great idea. In a large number of Asian countries, football seems to be a massive thing. Several years ago, about 14 of them, I arrived in Singapore airport on my way to Australia.

Prior to landing, I was giving a landing card to fill out and give to the customs officer. Part of the card had to include my address and the first question that the customs officer asked when he saw ‘Glasgow’ on the card was ‘Celtic or Rangers?’

Obviously one of the two potential answers to that question no longer exist but the point I am making is that even so far back, people all over the place know who Celtic are.

I know 14 years ago, to some people at least, wasn’t a long time ago. However, it was a time when very few people had access to the internet at any time they wanted to. Those who were lucky enough to have access were probably running a 56k dial up connection at home. To non technical readers, that’s stupidly slow in comparison to a normal home connection today – probably about 300 times slower.

Over the last few years, with some of the Champions League matches that we have been involved in, increased availability of the internet and almost every football match being available to watch online, I can only assume that our profile has increased further over the world.

Now to think of China specifically, we have had a few Chinese players over the last few years and really, it hasn’t gone very well. Du Wei came and went quite quickly and Zheng Zhi (who’s name I still never learned the correct pronunciation of) never lasted very long either.

However, I think now that popularity of football over there is increasing, it’s reasonable to assume that the investment in player development will increase. In turn, you’ve probably guessed it by now, but I suspect that means that the quality of player will improve too.

I know nothing about the standard of living in China but I suspect that if we give a young player from there the chance to come and play at Celtic park and in the Champions league, then we will have a good chance of enticing them over.

As much as most people hate this, including me, a lot of people outside of the UK and Ireland think of both Scotland and England being the same place. It may well be that some players will only come to us with a view of moving to the EPL but for me, that’s fine. As long as the money is right for Celtic.

Of the three main departures from Celtic last season, I think Victor Wanyama may end up moving to bigger and better things. Gary Hooper and Kelvin Wilson ? I’m not so sure. Hooper seems to be struggling to get a start at Norwich. Wilson is not playing at a level that’s equal to Champions league football so perhaps that will make players think twice about moving from us to the lower levels of English football.

It also gives our management a chance to say to players who are thinking of moving on that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

We all know that our transfer policy of recent times has been to buy in younger players that can be sold on so with Chinese football being an untapped market, why not give it a go?

Of course, I don’t know much about Chinese football but if the players are good enough them why not bring them over? If it means that we can sell a few more shirts over there and generate more money for the club, then go for it.

Any football expert (i.e not me), will tell you that signing a player is a risk. Yes, it may be a risk for us to look into signing a player or two from China but is it a much bigger risk than signing a young lad from Israeli or Belgian football for example?