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McLeish won’t push for Celtic players

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Alex McLeish won’t force the issue of taking Celtic players on Scotland’s mid summer tour to Peru and Mexico.

Outgoing chief executive Stewart Regan arranged the matches five weeks before the opening UEFA qualifiers of the 2018/19 season with eight Celtic players involved with Scotland this season.

Peter Lawwell has gone public with his concern about finding out about the matches through the media with no appetite at any level for the matches.

The SFA are believed to be picking up a fee of £250,000 for the two games with McLeish, who collected £1.7m in EBT payments from Rangers (IL), preparing to take a squad of misfits out to South America.

Back in my day if we had been promised a trip to Peru and Mexico in the summer we’d have been ecstatic,” he told The Sun. “It would have been ‘Hallelujah, brilliant’ but, yeah, I can understand the clubs’ stance with the way European football is now mapped out.

They fall two weeks after those games — or maybe three weeks — I’m not sure the exact schedule but I do understand that they maybe feel it wasn’t appropriate timing but it is there, we are going to go — and it may be a good opportunity for other players.

Some other players might be thinking ‘Ooft, that’s a chance for me to get on that plane and impress the manager’.

There is always something good out of it. You can always try to look for something good out of something perceived to be negative.”

The match with Peru is on May 29 followed by a five hour flight to Mexico to play another nation heading to the World Cup Finals in Russia.

With Celtic’s first European qualifier scheduled for July 11 Brendan Rodgers will start pre-season training in mid June.

The final round of SPFL fixtures are on May 13 with the Scottish Cup Final on May 19.

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