Tom Rogic to miss Celtic matches as Australia name squad for World Cup qualifiers

Celtic midfielder Tom Rogic has been ruled out of next month’s Old Firm fixture against Rangers after Australia named him in their squad for upcoming World Cup qualifiers.

Celtic's Tom Rogic has been called up to the Australia squad. (Photo by Alan Harvey / SNS Group)

The 29-year-old has been in excellent form for the Hoops this season and Socceroos head coach Graham Arnold has responded by calling him up for the matches against Vietnam and Oman on January 27 and February 1 respectively.

The Asian Football Confederation international window clashes with three Celtic fixtures, meaning Rogic will be unavailable for the games against Hearts on January 26, Dundee United on January 29 and Rangers on February 2.

Rogic is joined in the squad by Martin Boyle, who Hibs have sold to Saudi Arabian side Al-Faisaly for around £3million.

Celtic face a further sweat over World Cup call-ups with Japan due to announce their squad on Friday. Recent additions Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate possible call-ups, although Kyogo Furuhashi’s hamstring injury is expected to rule him out.

If Celtic were to lose three players to international duty, they will be entitled to request a postponement to the affected domestic fixtures, something Ange Postecoglou did not rule out when discussing the matter last week.

“That falls into the department of stuff that I don’t really think about,” he said. “It’s not a problem yet. I could spend hours thinking about it and what we were going to do and strategise and have meetings on it – then in the end find out that only one gets selected. So, I’m not going to worry about that. We’ll plan as we always have, that when we lose our players to international duty we’ll crack on and play the games we need to play. At the moment, there’s no point even thinking about that. As it stands, none of the players have been selected, so until that happens….we’ll look at it then.”

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