It has been revealed that there are plans in place for the Hoops to visit Japan in summer 2023 during pre-season [Sponichi Annex]. 

When Kyogo Furuhashi arrived at the club last summer Celtic’s multimedia and marketing team set up a separate twitter account which has been a great success [@CelticFCJPN] gaining over 60,000 followers with all tweets being sent out in Japanese at different times of the day.

Kyogo’s arrival in Glasgow also coincided with the fact that Ange Postecoglou had also managed Yokohama F Marinos in the J-League and became a champion before making the switch to Celtic meaning that there was interest in both to see how their journeys progressed with each other.

Since then, in the January transfer window Postecoglou made four first team additions to the squad (Daizen Maeda, Yosuke Ideguchi, Matt O’Riley and Reo Hatate) with three of those individuals now having played for the Japanese national team.

The Scottish Champions have previously visited Japan before when Gordon Strachan’s side made the visit over in 2006 to take on Yokohama F Marinos in a friendly with it again looking likely that both sides could face each other again due to the strong links which the two sides have through manager Ange Postecoglou who has had success at both and Daizen Maeda who was given a proper farewell by his old side only last month.

Negotiations are supposedly underway with it being said that members of Celtic’s marketing staff have already visited Japan on several occasions.

One of the most recent ventures was a collaboration with Vissel Kobe who Kyogo Furuhashi used to play for that journalist Dan Orlowitz’s potentially thinks could be the Hoops other opposition if they can escape the relegation zone.

This trips makes perfect sense from a marketing perspective and will be a solid challenge for the Celts. It is hoped that by the time summer 2023 rolls around that more tourists are allowed to visit the country with it still being the case that Japan’s borders are still closed.