GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - OCTOBER 02: Celtic Chief Executive Officer Michael Nicholson during a UEFA Europa League 2025/26 League Phase MD2 match between Celtic and SC Braga at Celtic Park, on October 02, 2025, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ross MacDonald/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Celtic have pulled out of the deal to sign Jocelyn Ta Bi.
Over the last fortnight the transfer had seemed a formality with Celtic close to agreeing a deal with Maccabi Netanya for a winger with less than 50 senior appearances in his career.
CELTIC AND THE GAZA LINK
The selling club has strong links to the Israeli military, especially the manufacture of drones for use in Gaza.
Celtic fans and human rights groups had highlighted that factor with a banner protest on London Road on Saturday drawing attention.
With their disconnect/contempt for their own fans the Ta Bi transfer would have been popular in the Celtic boardroom but it seems that they have got cold feet over the deal.
The well connected Stephen McGowan broke the news in The Herald that the deal with Israel had been called off:
Celtic’s hopes of concluding a £2million deal for Ivory Coast winger Jocelyn Ta Bi have been undermined by injury.
The 20-year-old was expected to become the first signing of Martin O’Neill’s third stint in charge this week.
Plans to complete the deal are now under review, however, after tests showed up that the Maccabi Netanya right winger requires surgery for a medical issue.
Regarded as a prospect for the future Celtic could return for Ta Bi in the summer but now look likely to turn their attention to other targets after the latest set back to plans to reinforce the squad this month.
Purely on football terms there is no need for a 20-year-old project winger at Celtic in January.
TRANSFER STALEMATE
A striker is the urgent priority, almost a fortnight into the transfer window it seems that Michael Nicholson has other things to do with his time.
A year after selling Kyogo Furuhashi Celtic were back in for the Birmingham striker, and rejected.
Martin O’Neill has two training sessions to prepare his side to face Falkirk on Wednesday. It seems unlikely that he’ll get the striker that his side requires.
If Celtic’s recruitment team can unearth the rising star of Israeli football they should be able to identify a striker better than Shin Yamada.
With the Ta Bi deal now off McGowan reports that Celtic are now less likely to sell Yang Hyun-jun. Birmingham were interested in the winger during the summer with Preston now keen as well.
There is no mention of a new striker in the report.
During 2025 Nicholson sold off Kyogo, Nicolas Kuhn and Adam Idah. The hapless Celtic CEO appears to have difficulties agreeing deals to bring players in.
NOTE: At Friday’s two media conferences no questions were put to O’Neill about signing Ta Bi.
Hooray! A 20yr old who can’t get a game for his own club in apartheid genocidal israel ain’t good enough for Celtic, simples! Where is our striker?
I don’t have a problem with this deal collapsing, or no striker being signed, but not for political reasons.
I would prefer that O’Neil and Maloney ran through the list drawn up by Tisdale to ensure we weren’t buying another bunch of players who couldn’t impact the team.
I wouldn’t trust any list drawn up by Tisdale as evidence suggests the players he sourced weren’t good enough.
O’Neil has been in a week now and I would expect that the list has been reviewed and players now identified. If there is no forward in the door prior to the Bologna match then I will be really anxious because that and the Hearts matches are now critical now to our season.
Not dealing with the perpetrators of genocide has nothing to do with politics, it’s called basic humanity, the standards for such being laid down at the Nuremberg trials and thereafter laid down in International law, the most basic humanitarian requirements.
Well we signed English players in the past from English clubs and I’m pretty sure that nation has had a rather sketchy pasy with regards to human rights world wide.
But then again we’ve signed players from Scottish clubs who as part of the British Empire, sent soldiers to subdue citizens of other nations.
You’re attempting to deflect criticism of Israel’s crimes against humanity by citing the British Empire. This is pure whataboutism & a logical fallacy that abandons moral consistency. The crimes of one empire do not excuse the decades-long crimes of an explicitly genocidal, apartheid state, which illegally occupies Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian territory while terrorising the region and creating waves of refugees.
I’m glad a generation of men like my grandfather didn’t share your absurd take in the 1940s. Zionists are the 21st century’s Nazis. Albert Einstein, along with other Jewish intellectuals, warned in 1948 that they were fascists-comparing them directly to Nazis after they massacred Palestinian villages. The Jewish philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz later called their brutal occupation ‘Judeo-Nazism’ in the 1990s. What would they call them today? No right thinking person would appease sadists & barbarism
Well said Andy.
Well said.
Very well put. ???
Absolutely Jim. It is basic humanity, not political.
To their eternal SHAME, the board Celtic FC have lost all concept of the values set at our foundation, but fortunately, the actual fans have not forgotten.
Dermot Desmond has never held such values. Money is his God.
It really is no wonder that other clubs find us difficult to deal with. Respect is diminishing fast for our club, due to the completely unprofessional board.
OK, whatever the reason, it’s the correct decision to cancel this business
with an israeli club at this time. Obviously.
But it still beggars belief: how much staff time / club resources have been wasted on this
contentious transfer?
To have reached a point of [apparently] quoting a buying price and the player having a
medical – it would suggest that a lot of Celtic time has been spent on this non-starter!
It would have made sense if ALL the available club recruitment resources were focused
on bringing in a striker first – ASAP – and even at the risk of missing out on other
positions in this window? Obviously…? 🙁
Justhatred @ 9.30am…
ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT POINT THERE BUDDY !
It’s not the past, but then you know this, it’s happening now and has been for over 70 years. Maybe you’d like me to show you some of the atrocities?, or would statements from British doctors, outlining how one week the children would all be shot in the head, the next shot in the heart, then on the 3rd week all the children were shot in the genitalia, almost like the shooters were playing a grotesque game, do?.
Shocking that you’d even try to play this down, world certainly has plenty monsters, but choosing to side with them, or attempt to lessen their crimes, really saddens me more than anything else.