Celtic fans were in for a surprise when they defeated Young Boys in the Champions League on Wednesday night.
Everyone was ecstatic when knockout football in the Champions League was guaranteed, but then the news about Kyogo Furuhashi broke.
Kyogo started Celtic’s triumph over Young Boys and had multiple goals ruled out for offside before being replaced in the 75th minute by Adam Idah.
The Parkhead crowd had no idea that would be Kyogo’s final appearance for Celtic, as he is currently on the verge of joining French club Rennes.
Yes, Jota’s return to Celtic is fantastic, but Kyogo’s leaving has been a knife in the heart of many, and Mark Wilson can’t seem to understand one thing.
Mark Wilson baffled by Kyogo Furuhashi’s imminent Celtic exit
No matter what happens, Kyogo is a Celtic icon, but Mark Wilson, like many others, was stunned to learn that the 30-year-old is leaving.
Wilson told Clyde1 Superscoreboard that for a trade to materialise now, the Japan star’must have actively’ urged the club to let him go.
He explained that Kyogo is not moving to join a great team, but rather one hovering above the relegation zone, and that he has not been tempted by Saudi Arabia’s money, thus everything is unusual.
“You know what we have to remember as well, Kyogo must have wanted to go through with this,” said Wilson.
“That’s what I can’t get my head around. That he would go to Rennes, who are sitting bottom half of the table anyway. It’s not as if he is going to a club that you go, ‘wow, that’s too good to turn down because I am fighting at the top end of a top league or I am getting weighed in beyond belief in my wages, so I am going to Saudi Arabia’.
“Kyogo must have actively said, ‘yeah, I want to leave’ and that surprises me. I know people are body language experts. They said last week, ‘oh, he didn’t really celebrate against Ross County’. There were times he didn’t celebrate goals like it was the last-minute winner all the time. I just can’t get my head around why he would want to go at this stage of the season.”
Why does Kyogo want to leave Celtic?
If this transaction had occurred in the summer, it would have been more comprehensible, but Brendan Rodgers has claimed that Kyogo requested to depart a number of months ago.
Some do not understand Kyogo’s motivation for wanting to go, and while no one has heard from him yet, you can expect to hear from him soon, it has been stated that it is due to a desire to play for Japan in the World Cup.
Kyogo missed Japan’s recent trip to the Qatar World Cup, and Sky Sports said that playing in a ‘top five league’ in Europe to improve his prospects of playing for his country is the reason for his unexpected departure.
‘Kyogo wants to join a top five league club to improve his prospects of participating in the World Cup with Japan,’ Sky reporter Anthony Joseph posted on Twitter.
