One of them went to Amsterdam as well- Neil Lennon revives Bolingoli’s disastrous Spanish jolly

Neil Lennon has revealed that one of his first team players was in Amsterdam while Boli Bolingoli enjoyed a day trip to Marbella.

In August 2020 with Scotland under lockdown regulations anyone travelling abroad had to spend 14 days in quarantine on their return.

Flights were probably running at around 10% of their usual capacities as folk came to terms with the restrictions that would see fans locked out of Celtic Park for more than a year.

With special testing conditions in place football was allowed to continue, players were split between different dressing rooms at Lennoxtown while it required a couple of coaches to travel to away grounds with social distancing rules strictly applied.

Bolingoli became front page news when his Spanish break came to light, Celtic had two games postponed with questions about the club being put to the First Minister at her daily briefing.

We had the Bolingoli incident at the start of that season. We’d played Hamilton and gave him a couple of days off and said you’re not allowed to leave Glasgow.

A week later we’re playing Kilmarnock. In between that he had gone to Spain, not told anyone and then was in the squad and played a bit of the game.

Then the story develops, develops, develops and we said ‘you weren’t supposed to leave Glasgow, what did you do?’

He said he flew to Andorra and then drove over the border to Belgium to see family. Two hours later he rings me and goes ‘Actually I went to Marbella for the day’ – he’s a grown man, what can you do?

I then had a meeting with the players – ‘Did anyone else leave Glasgow?’ No. Later on I get two phone calls from players – I’m not going to say who – saying ‘Gaffer I was in Amsterdam’ and ‘I was in Manchester’.

“You’re like ‘Guys come on!’ Looking back, it was really difficult for them – they missed their families. There were no restaurants and no social interaction with people and they broke the rules. I get it.

Later in the season Lennon took the players on an equally disastrous trip to Dubai that saw 14 players forced to isolate with Gavin Strachan put in charge for two matches that were drawn.