Daizen Maeda on Celtic Champions League lesson learned

The National

5 hours ago

And he reckons the expanded competition helped improve his game.
The Japanese ace was a multiple Player of the Year award winner and helped Celtic to the double before they suffered a shock Scottish Cup Final defeat to Aberdeen.
Celtic also qualified for the next stage of the Champions League before they were edged out by this season's Bundesliga winners Bayern Munich 3-2 on aggregate.
And Maeda insisted he loved the new look competition after admitting a 7-1 battering by Borussia Dortmund made them rethink their approach.
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He said: "I really enjoyed playing in the Champions League this season because there were so many games and it gave us a lot of different challenges.
"I think the new format has been great and I am excited to try it again this upcoming season. It helped me improve.
"We played some great teams. Personally, I actually thought the best side we played was Atalanta because they didn't appear to have any weaknesses.
"Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund were very strong, but they had some weaknesses in their team, but when we played Atalanta, there was nothing for us to work on.
"When we faced Dortmund, we chose to go head-on with them and lost seven goals.
"It was this defeat that made us realise that it is unrealistic to go toe-for-toe against strong teams at this stage. That is why we learned from our mistakes and turned to a pragmatic approach.
"I scored four goals and was happy with my performances.
"We had a chance to win the treble, but lost the Scottish Cup Final on the last day of the season so I still think we have room for improvement at Celtic.
"Personally, although everyone spoke about how I scored more goals, I think my increase in assists were more satisfying for me.
"I like to defend too. It's muscle memory for me. When the team loses the ball, because I am the first line of defence, my body will instinctively start chasing back. This defensive awareness has been deeply rooted in my bones and I don't need to think about it."
And Maeda, in an interview in his homeland, revealed how he got his inspiration for his iconic knee slide celebration that he did 33 times during the campaign.
He explained: "My son was doing knee sliding exercises at home. I was inspired by that and thought I could do it too. I thought I'd give it a go and it was surprisingly easy, so I started doing it after that.
"It's easy to do in Scotland because the grass is always wet."