Friday’s news confirming that Tomoki Iwata had signed for Celtic was no great surprise. There had been strong rumours in the media over the past several days before the official announcement. But the details of the deal raised a question mark for a lot of the Hoops fans.
As the third signing for Celtic before the January transfer window had even opened, fans were rightfully delighted. The signings of Alistair Johnston and Yuki Kobayashi had already been confirmed weeks back. Thus, the club have moved even more swiftly this time around than last season’s triple signing of Daizen Maeda, Reo Hatate and Yosuke Ideguchi.
And there is another similarity to that pre-January window recruitment with Iwata that has left fans puzzled. The 2022 J League MVP has signed on a short loan deal with a compulsory purchase clause for the summer. That’s the same arrangement by which Maeda was brought in last season.
With Celtic, Yokohama F. Marinos and Iwata committed to a permanent deal in the future already, fans have been left confused as to why the player has arrived on an initial loan deal.
Celtic fans left confused by one aspect of Iwata deal
So why has the deal been structured this way? There is a common factor in the club’s two deals with Yokohama Marinos, part of the City Football Group. And as speculated and tweeted out by Dan Orlowitz, this could be a ‘CFG Family’ thing.
Some have even speculated that this kind of a deal structure helps Celtic balance their books in the summer.
And considering the fact that Ange Postecoglou was the highly respected manager of Yokohama F. Marinos before arriving at Celtic and Mark Lawwell’s history with the City Football Group, one cannot rule this theory out completely either.
Whatever maybe the case, the fact of the matter is that Iwata is a Celtic player and all we can hope is that he has a successful time at Parkhead.