Celtic's Daizen Maeda opens up on rare pre-match nerves, scoring premonition and need to take on goal burden from injured Kyogo

The predatory instincts of Daizen Maeda weren’t in question even before the Japanese forward required merely four minutes of his Celtic debut to plunder a first goal for the club the other night.

Celtic’s Daizen Maeda celebrates a first goal for the club he had "decided" he would score even before he stepped on to the pitch for his debut. (Photo by Ross MacDonald / SNS Group)

Not when among his possessions is a natty golden boot trophy for the 23-strike haul in his last season with Yokahama F Marinos. Turns out, though, that the 25-year-old isn’t half bad when it comes to premonitions, either. For, even when struck by an unexpected bout of the jitters before taking his bow in front of 60,000 at Celtic Park for the 2-0 win over Hibs on Tuesday, he just knew the evening would produce a net-rippling from him. Not that Maeda wasn’t jangling over the hoopla that had surrounded his arrival along with fellow J-League imports Reo Hatate and Youske Ideguchi - compounded by the need for him to fill the void created by the injury loss of his countryman, and Celtic’s goalscoring talisman this season, Kyogo Furuhashi.

“I really don’t get nervous, but before the Hibs game, I heard a lot of things and a lot of people spoke to me,” he said. “This is why I got nervous, but fortunately, I could convert that feeling into a good energy. That was a good thing for me. But I could score the goal and I feel very happy about it. I didn’t imagine that it was going to happen, but I decided before the game that I would [score]. I received a good pass from my team-mate [Tom Rogic] and what I did was just finish it.”

Maeda’s first appearance at his new football home didn’t simply live up to expectations for the new arrival. The event turned out to be “much higher” for him on that front. He admits he got a kick out of experiencing it alongside other debutant Hatate. And while his manager Ange Postecoglou has cautioned about depriving his four Japanese players of their individuality, Maeda maintained it would be “great” for this J-League quartet to turn out together for Celtic. An occurrence that could be some way off, with Furuhashi’s hamstring problem expected to sideline him for the next three weeks.

Maeda volunteers that the absence of the club’s 16-goal top scorer places a real onus on him. Yet, he doesn’t pretend he could be a direct replacement. Or that he is a shoe-in to start with Furuhashi unavailable. Even when, through being previously managed by Postecoglou at Yokohama, he is as well versed as any within the Celtic squad in the high-energy attacking approach demanded by the Australian.

“I am not a player with the technique [of Kyogo]. I am more a player with heart,” he said. “So I want to show how I can fight against the other teams … show the fans. I have to score a lot of goals. If not, the team cannot reach to be the league champions. So I want to be a player who can lead at Celtic. I knew the manager, but that does not mean I can always be a certain player [in the team]. There is a lot of competition, so from the training, I have to show my quality. But, yes, I know the manager’s style very well and I am sure later we can play much better.”

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