Thursday 10 September 2009

Celtic's Asian Stars




o











Clockwise : Koki Mizuno, Ki Sung-yong and Zheng Zhi

Shunsuke Nakamura probably paved the way for Asians to make its presence felt in the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and thanks to him, we have Zheng Zhi and Korean starlet Ki Sung-yong making their way to Glasgow Celtics, on top of Japan's Koki Mizuno who has been there since last year.

It also makes interesting reading that as usual, the East Asian are showing the way forward. We wonder when the West Asian players who have the talent and physical attributes, will make a smiliar journey to Europe? Back to home, for all the talk that we performed superbly in that dubious friendly (note friendly) against Man Utd, when are our players going to make moves such as this?

We are not asking them to go to that level, even if they can play in UAE, Saudi, Japan or Korea, it would be great. Ok enough of digressing about our football team, which I am doing out of frustration!

Let's start about Zheng Zhi - China's national team skipper and natural all rounder! The twice China's Player of the Year has a chance to resurrect his career at least in the SPL after Charlton were demoted and he would only be the second player from China to feature in the SPL after Du Wei, who sadly, never found his footing there.

Mizuno on the other hand came in last year from JEF United and is quite comfortable on both sides of the flank and has a few caps on the Japanese national team. However, he hasn't really set Celtic on fire like his compatriot, Nakamura, who happens to be yours truly's favourite Asian player.

Ki is only 20 but I think a move to Celtic now is better to cut his teeth before looking at the more challenging EPL few years down the road. His worth is so great that his ex-club, FC Seoul is reluctant to transfer him now but would only send him in January as his team sits on top of the K-League. This is FC Seoul's second transfer after selling another star Lee Chung-yong to Bolton.

With Celtic out of the Champions League, these Asian players would at least need to ensure the SPL title does head to Rangers since Scotland has only two teams... right!

No comments: