Daizen Maeda

Mad * pressing in frist half * * he is non stop man just seen highlights

 

We'll never have another player like him ever again, he's a complete one off, no other club in world football has a player like him with his incessant pressing

 

DAIZEN MAEDA will never stop putting in the hard yards.

Just as long as he gets to recover at the soft play with his children


The Japanese flying machine knows Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers will ring the changes to cope with five games in 15 days that could define their season.

But after the goal that snatched a dramatic Champions League point at home to Club Brugge on Wednesday night, Maeda swears he doesn’t need ice baths or squad rotation to keep him fresh.

Just an hour on a bouncy castle.

The 27-year-old dotes on five-year-old daughter Soyo and two-year-old son Tensei and admitted: “I recover my energy by playing with the kids.


After a lot of games I take them to soft play centres and that refreshes me.

“Maybe I have a different way of relaxing from the others, but that works for me.

“I want to play every game, so it’s up to me to recover as well as possible, so that hopefully I will keep starting.

“However, no club that plays this many games can possibly go with the same starting 11 every time, so it’s up to whoever is picked to prove themselves — because we always need to win.


Regardless of the opposition or the competition, we just have to win the next game and to keep winning. We can think of who comes next once we win this one.

“Strong teams have players who can step up and show themselves. We are that kind of team and I am sure we have guys who can do this over the tough period ahead


Maeda kept his place for yesterday’s 5-0 league thrashing of Ross County before going off at half-time.

Next up is Wednesday’s trip to nearest challengers Aberdeen, the visit of Hibs to Parkhead on Saturday, a vital Champions League trip to Dinamo Zagreb 72 hours after that, then the Premier Sports Cup final against Rangers at Hampden a week on Sunday.


Rodgers showed his intentions by bringing in Liam Scales, Luke McCowan, Paulo Bernardo, and Adam Idah — who all scored — along with Alex Valle and James Forrest, with Auston Trusty, Greg Taylor, Reo Hatate, Arne Engels, Nicolas Kuhn and Kyogo Furuhashi rested.

The Celtic boss pressured the board into adding quality as well as quantity for spells like these and now is the time when fans will find out just how well those millions were spent.

If he gets the balance right they could wake up two weeks tomorrow with at least a five-point lead at the top of the Premiership, one foot in the play-offs for the knockout stages of the Champions League and the first domestic silverware of the season on the sideboard.

There’s no question Celtic’s depth on the bench has taken them up a level, both at home and in Europe, this season


That was a fact rammed home against Brugge when Bernardo and Valle came on for the toiling Arne Engels and Greg Taylor just after the hour — and within two minutes, the Spanish left-back had set up

Maeda for a stunning strike which hauled them back in a contest that had seemed way beyond rescuing.

Moments like these could be worth fortunes in the long term. Points like these could end up more than justifying the money sitting on the sidelines for all but 20 or 30 minutes of every game




That’s a lesson to the club’s moneymen after too many seasons of thinking all they had to do was be better than Rangers.

But Maeda believes everyone at the club should be learning all the time.

He said: “As a team in the first half we didn’t perform well and the fans got frustrated, so it was a difficult time, but then we got the goal and the point and we all felt better.

“Champions League games are the most difficult and we always learn lessons from them.


We will learn from this game, because it’s all about experience. And one point in any Champions League game is a good point.

“We just have to focus on the next one now and take on board what happened. We always want to say that each game has been a good learning experience for us.

“As for the goal, every one I score is important, but this was such a big game that it felt really good.



Maeda got right behind Cameron Carter-Vickers, whose bizarre own goal had plunged Parkhead into stunned silence.

Keeper Kasper Schmeichel quickly galvanised the team by calling an impromptu huddle before the game restarted and Maeda says that proves how together they are.

He said: “Cameron has been a leader for this team and he will keep being so.

“What happened was not only his fault, it was a team thing and we all take part of the responsibility.


In the time I have been here, we have never had a huddle as we did after the goal. But we are disciplined and it showed how much we wanted to win the game.

“It was a good gesture in a very difficult moment