Bizarre reason Celtic stars were left out of Japan’s World Cup squad

The countdown to the 2022 World Cup has begun, with Qatar getting ready to host the biggest sporting event of the year. Although the fans will miss seeing Celtic in action during this period of time, the players will keep the Hoops’ flag flying high, while representing their respective nations in football’s biggest tournament.

Qualifying from the AFC region, Japan will be participating in the global extravaganza. Placed alongside teams like Spain, Costa Rica, and Germany in Group E, the Asian side will have to play out of their socks to make it to the knockout stages.

Japan head coach, Hajime Moriyasu, has already dropped a shock by leaving Kyogo Furuhashi and Reo Hatate out of the 27-man squad assembled for the upcoming World Cup.

While Daizen Maeda has made the cut, the omissions of those two have certainly raised a few eyebrows.

Why were Celtic’s Kyogo and Hatate left out of Japan’s squad for the World Cup?

Moriyasu commented on his selection criteria for the World Cup squad that he has picked. As reported by The Scotsman, the Japanese national team manager said:

"“We selected players who will be on the same wavelength as a team, who will be able to move and link up together, who through their organization will be able to make use of their individual strengths.”"

One would think that the fact that Kyogo and Hatate have played together at Celtic for the past year or so, would mean that they would be on the same wavelength and able to link up together better than most people.

Perhaps Hatate’s exclusion does not come as a huge surprise, as he has not been involved in the national team picture. But Kyogo played quite regularly for Japan leading up to the tournament.

Maeda has been added to Japan’s forward department along with Bochum’s Takuma Asano, Eintracht Frankfurt’s Daichi Kamada, Cercle Brugge’s Ayase Ueda, and Reims’ Junya Ito.

Only one of them has scored more goals than Kyogo this season, and that is Kamada of Eintracht Frankfurt.