Japan’s World Cup qualifiers against Vietnam and Oman could carry some extra interest for Celtic supporters.
As well as watching Kyogo Furuhashi with fingers crossed that he gets through the matches uninjured there is the prospect of a live look at Daizen Maeda.
The Yokohama F Marinos striker has been heavily linked with a move to Celtic, in June the two clubs negotiated a deal for Ange Postecoglou to move to Scotland in the middle of the J-League season.
With Kyogo showing how quickly players can adapt to life in Scotland Celtic are expected to return to Japan in January with Maeda very well known to the current Celtic boss.
Discussing his World Cup call up, the Yokohama striker told The Sun:
It’s been a long time coming for me to get back into the international squad. I’ve had to work very hard to get here. I played in the Olympics in the summer, but didn’t score so I am very determined to do well for the full squad.
Of course, it will be a very tough fight for me to try and get into the team. Kyogo Furuhashi is doing extremely well and scoring goals in Scotland it would be nice to play with him but the most important thing for us is to get six points from these two very difficult away games.
There could be some interesting conversations between the two strikers this week, if Maeda moved to Celtic in January it could see the style of the team altered to include both men in attack.
Kyogo was mainly described as a winger when his signing was announced but his scoring rate in the J-League has been repeated playing at centre-forward for Celtic.