Celtic star Paulo Bernardo has explained how his loan move to Gornik Zabrze came about. The midfielder joined the Bhoys in 2024 and has since made 38 league appearances, but he struggled for game time last season.
Bernardo was part of the title-winning team but only made eight league appearances in what will have been a difficult campaign for him, largely manning the bench.
Like any 24-year-old, Bernardo wants to be playing regular football, and for now, he has had to go to Poland to find it, joining Gornik Zabrze on loan for the season.
Speaking to CelticWay, about how the move came about, he explained: "It was very important for me to play and I'm still at the age that I need to play. Here, hopefully I can do that for the rest of the season. Of course it all depends on how I can perform.
"It was a very important thing for me that I need to play football. When I talked to the club, to the coach [Gasparik], he was very happy for me to join and that was a key factor to join here."
Bernardo added about his conversation with Celtic boss Martin O'Neill: "I spoke to him the last days that the deal was almost done. I had the conversation with him and I told him I needed to play football and I don't think in Celtic right now I would have the game time that I needed.
"He was very open with me and he totally understood. He opened the doors for me to go and he was very honest as well. He told me that it was probably the best for me to come here and have game time."
The open approach is good to see
It's always nice to see these situations pan out as they should, and that is one of Martin O'Neill's strengths. Too often we see out of favour players sent to train with the kids, or perhaps they are on the periphery and kept around for depth even when it is completely the opposite of what the player needs.
Bernardo is still relatively young at 24, and he still has time to improve and develop. We don't know whether he has the ability to be a starter at Celtic, but we are not going to find out with him on the bench for almost every game.
He is better off going out on loan, as he has, trying to do well there and making a fresh case at Parkhead in the summer.
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