Postecoglou quotes leave the door open to make SPFL postponement call

Ange Postecoglou has left the door open to request the postponement of three key fixtures due to World Cup call ups. 

In a conference call for Sunday newspapers the Celtic boss is quoted saying that he wouldn’t be trying to talk the managers of Japan and Australia into leaving Kyogo Furuhashi and Tom Rogic out on international matches that coincide with games against Hearts, Dundee United and the Glasgow derby. 

It isn’t clear when the conference call took place. Since there are no fresh comments about Reo Hatate or Daizen Maeda there is a strong possibility that the call took place before Friday’s triple signing which also brought Yosuke Ideguchi to the east end of Glasgow. 

With four likely internationalists unavailable Celtic are entitled to request postponements of their fixtures which would give the SPFL a fixture headache as the Scottish Cup, Europa Conference and Scotland fixtures make demands on the calendar. 

From that conference call the Glasgow Times quotes Postecoglou saying: 

It’s a World Cup game so there are no negotiations. Both teams have important qualifiers and World Cups are important for every country irrespective of where you come from.  

We are obliged to release them and we will. That has been in our planning for a while.  We have known that they are going to be away in that period if they get selected.  I totally understand that whatever fixtures we have in that period they are likely to miss out. 

With a potential prize fund of £40m on offer to the SPFL winners it would seem highly unlikely that Celtic would go into three key matches missing four players. 

The match at Tynecastle on January 26 and the Glasgow derby on February 2 are both scheduled to be shown live on Sky Sports. 

Japan and Australia are likely to name their squads in mid-January, once the squads are known Celtic can decide whether or not to request a postponement.