CELTIC have turned down the chance of a glamour friendly against Barcelona, which would have been played in Malaga next week, writes Rob Robertson.
The Parkhead club confirmed last night that the Spanish side had contacted them with a view to arranging the game. However, despite the fact that the Celtic squad will be in Malaga on their winter training camp, they have decided to reject the offer.
The match would have led to a bumper pay day for the Parkhead club as it would have been beamed live throughout Spain. Now it looks likely that a German League team will take their place.
Barcelona were contracted to play the game because of a television sponsorship deal which meant that when they had a free Spanish League weekend, they had to play a live televised match.
Celtic were approached after Malmo of Sweden had pulled out of the fixture at short notice.
Celtic supporters will be disappointed that the game will not now take place given that it would have been the most glamorous of any so far arranged by any of the Scottish clubs during the winter shutdown.
There could even have been the possibility of the match been shown in Scotland if a deal could be reached between TV com-panies in both countries.
The approach to Celtic followed a phone call from one of the agents involved in the friendly game to former Celtic director Dominic Keane, now co-owner of Livingston.
The agent asked if he thought the Parkhead club would be interested in taking part in the game. ''I gave him the name of Eric Riley at Celtic and he said he would probably contact him,'' said Keane. ''The next I heard was that a German team had been lined up to play the game, so I had no idea if Celtic had even been contacted.''
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article