Looking at the Celtic players that are at the World Cup, the player who has the best chance of making progress is Josip Juranovic, whose Croatia side are well-placed to reach the last 16.

Cameron Carter-Vickers’ USA side have a chance of making progress, but he hasn’t played a minute of the tournament yet, whilst Aaron Mooy’s Australia will be outsiders against against Denmark.

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That brings us to Daizen Maeda, who started for Japan in their win over Germany, but was taken off before Japan completed their epic comeback, and didn’t feature at all in the defeat to Costa Rica.

Japan’s final game is against Spain, and they will not be favoured to win the game, but a point could still see Japan qualify depending on how Germany fare against Costa Rica. Maeda should be re-instated in the Japan starting line-up for the fixture, as he has the ability in his game to cause the Spanish defence problems. 

Maeda and the rest of the Japan players will surely become national heroes if they can pull off a shock win over Spain, and Maeda deserves the opportunity to feature in the game from the start.

Looking at the two games Japan have played so far, it is hard to judge if they errored in not selecting Kyogo and Reo Hatate in the squad, as they did beat Japan but lost to Costa Rica, which shows an inconsistency that even good players like Kyogo and Hatate might not have been able to prevent.

Hatate might well have helped Japan create more chances against Costa Rica though, as recently for Celtic that has been a big part of his game, you only need to look at the last game before the World Cup, against Ross County, for an example of that.

Kyogo would also have likely created chances for Japan, but when you consider that he missed some big chances in the Champions League it does perhaps make sense that the player didn’t get selected for the World Cup.

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In all likelihood, Maeda will probably be back in Scotland soon, as Japan will find it hard to get a point against Spain, and Germany will probably beat Costa Rica, meaning that Japan will be knocked out of the World Cup.

Celtic could well have most of their World Cup players back soon, the only team likely to go on a long run in the tournament is Josip Juranovic’s Croatia. Who knows, Japan could get a positive result against Spain, Maeda should be given the chance to influence the result.