No regrets- Celtic summer signing opens up on his struggles

Marco Tilio insists that he didn’t leave Melbourne City too early when he signed a five year deal with Celtic in the summer.

After just two substitute appearances totalling less than 30 minutes the winger is back in the A-League looking to revive his career.

Joining a new club with an injury is always going to make life difficult, when there is a change of manager and two others- Yang Hyun-jun and Luis Palma signed in your position it makes things even more challenging.

Returning on loan to Melbourne City can be viewed in many ways, some might see it as admitting failure with others seeing it as a chance to pick up his career and bounce back.

Asked if he had left too soon the winger told Australian site TFBL:

No, I believed I was ready. I’d done my time here, and I thought I’d done really well and the build-up all the way until then when I made that decision to go there, I thought I was ready.

You can’t tell in football obviously. I went away with the under 23s and got injured. I then thought it was a week (long) injury. I signed the contract and obviously I was injured and out for three months.

So it doesn’t help, and then you’re competing with eight or nine other wingers that are just as good as you, if not better, and it was always going to be a difficult road trying to get into that team of Celtic. But no, I don’t think I left too early.

With Nicolas Kuhn added to the Celtic squad in January it seems that Rodgers has decided that the summer intake of wingers wasn’t of the standard required.

It is difficult to see where Tilio fits in at Celtic, as well as the squad he is currently working with Rodgers has Sead Haksabanovic and Mikey Johnston out on loan.