Kyogo Furuhashi: Insight into Celtic player's style, his match fitness and level of English

It has been a drawn-out process for Japanese attacker Kyogo Furuhashi to pitch up at Celtic following an agreement being reached on a £4.6million deal for him with homeland club Vissel Kobe a fortnight ago.

Kyogo Furuhashi excited supporters in the J-League.

The club’s manager is in no doubt the 26-year-old will be worth the wait. He came on a 78th-minute substitute during the 2-1 defeat by Hearts in Celtic’s Premiership opener and is expected to play a big role in Thursday’s Europa League third round qualifier away to Czech side Jablonec.

Fitness will not be an issue. “The good thing about him is that he is mid-season,” Postecoglou said of the Japanese. “He has been working hard in quarantine and has good match fitness. So it won’t take him long to get up to speed.

“He is the kind of player the fans will enjoy watching. He is exciting, he certainly was in the J League. In the J League attacking players tend to be foreigners and he was the one Japanese attacking player who really excited every time he played.

“He comes to us at a good age. He is not too young and so I don’t think he will be overawed by the experience. He is at an age where I think he just really wants to prove himself over here in Europe. I think he will feed off the crowd and the crowd will feed off him. I hope he has a really fantastic career here at Celtic.

“To be fair to him he began the process of learning English when he was in Japan. They’re pretty disciplined over there and the ones who want to move to Europe start that process by themselves. It’s fair to say his English is a lot better than my Japanese!

“I tend to concentrate on my own team but whenever we played Vissel Kobe, he stood out. They had some tremendous players in Andres Iniesta and Thomas Vermaelen but Kyogo was the one I always knew was going to be a constant threat. It was the one game my defenders never looked forward to. They knew his ability to get in behind, break lines and use his speed. He was a constant source of aggravation to us.”

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