Liel Abada often does not get enough credit for the job that he has done since arriving at Celtic last summer. Early on in the 2021/22 campaign, he was the standout player for the Hoops despite the fact the he was still a teenager at that point and others around him were struggling during the first few months under the management of Ange Postecoglou.
According to stats from Transfermarkt, Abada has scored 21 goals and provided 12 assists in 65 appearances while playing 3760 minutes of football in total.
Many would argue that he does not get the playing time that he deserves and at 20 years of age, the future seems very bright for the Israeli international winger.
One of the biggest assets of Abada’s game is his ability to score goals from the wing. His numbers in that department are very impressive and are expected to get only better moving forward. In fact, he seems to be working particularly on his finishing and looking up to players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Mohamed Salah. As reported by the Daily Record, he said:
"“I’ve played as a winger all my career so far but I really work on my finishing at training – and after training too. I stay to work on crosses and finishes.“I want to help this team win points in every game. Hopefully I can keep scoring to help my team-mates. I look at players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Mo Salah, wingers who have taken scoring to a new level. I learn from them because they are the best in the world.”"
Can Abada be a future starter for Celtic?
At this point of time, it would be hard to describe Abada as a starter for Celtic even though he is getting some decent playing time overall.
He is just 20 years of age though and has time to develop into that role. It would not be a surprise if players like Jota and Kyogo end up moving to one of the top five European leagues in the not too distant future.
And then someone like Abada could be a readymade replacement for them, instead of the club having to dip into the transfer market and hoping that they sign the right player. For now though, there are a lot of areas of his game that he needs to work on.