Virals: Celtic announce permanent exit of one-time Premiership top scorer
After weeks and weeks of speculation, Celtic have finally confirmed that striker Georgios Giakoumakis has left the club.
The Hoops took to social media to announce that the Greek striker has joined MLS side Atlanta United.
The club didn’t really say much on the social media post, only that they thanked the player for his performances at Celtic, and wished him ‘good luck’ in America.
Twitter: Giorgos Giakoumakis has joined Atlanta United on a permanent transfer.
Everyone at #CelticFC thanks Giorgos for h… https://t.co/hXa9QPoduv (@CelticFC)
Giakoumakis himself was a bit more forthcoming on the matter, as he took to Instagram to send a farewell message to the Celtic support.
Now that Giakoumakis’ move has been completed, Celtic can move on and start planning their transfer work for next season, and it might have started already.
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The bottom line is that Giakoumakis was a good striker for Celtic. In total he scored 26 goals in 57 appearances for the club, and last season in particular he scored some key goals for the club, with the hat-trick in a win over Dundee, and the goal that clinched the title against Dundee United stick out as particularly important for the Hoops.
So important was the 28-year-old to the Bhoys that he was the joint top scorer in the Scottish Premiership last season with 13 goals. Okay, there have been players who scored a lot more goals in the league for the Hoops, but if Giakoumakis hadn’t chipped in with those double figures Celtic arguably wouldn’t have won the league.
It should also be remembered that he was the only Celtic striker to score in the Champions League group stages as well, and not many Hoops forwards have managed to score in such a prestigious competition.
However, when it emerged that contracts talks between the club and the player had broken down, it did seem almost inevitable that the Greek international was going to leave Celtic, and the departure has dragged on for a while, as both Urawa Red Diamonds and Atlanta United were keen on signing the striker, and the MLS side has won out.
Celtic have a replacement for Giakoumakis already at the club in Hyeongyu Oh, and it will be interesting to see if he can perform as well as the player he replaced did for the Hoops, hopefully he is able to do that and score some important goals.
As Celtic say, good luck to ‘GG’, hopefully he is able to score plenty of goals for his new club, and he deserves to be remembered as a good Celtic striker who was key to a title win.
