The impact made at Celtic by the three Japanese signings last season has been nothing short of remarkable. Daizen Maeda and Kyogo Furuhashi have both been exceptional with Maeda also making an impact with Japan at the World Cup in Qatar. Meanwhile Kyogo has already scored 26 goals this season, including both goals in the League Cup Final against theRangers a few weeks ago in Celtic’s 2-1 win. But anyone who reckons that the Celtic striker, is a shoe-in for the Player of the Year hasn’t been watching Celtic closely enough because if they had they realise that there is another significant challenger for that accolade and that is Reo Hatate.
Kyogo arrived at Celtic in the summer of 2021 ahead of the his compatriots who made the move to Scotland in January 2022. And in the January 2023 window Ange Postecoglou utilised his J-League knowledge to add another two stars, Yuki Kobayashi, a classy left-sided central and last season’s J-League Player of the Year Tomoki Iwata, who is a holding midfielder.
Reo Hatate is these days been compared to Paul McStay and for Celtic supporters of a certain age that is a mightily impressive compliment. Yet Hatate himself is more focused on studying his own game as he seeks further improvement and in his regular diary column in Japanese media outlet Sportiva, Hatate explained a tactical adjustment he made to counter the added attention he was getting from opponents after his sparkling arrival into Scottish football.
“I have been thinking about and devising my own ways to improve the quality of my performance in front of the goal, an issue that Ange Postecoglou told me I needed to develop.
“I have been playing at the bottom of midfield with captain Callum McGregor this season, and I felt that the team could perform better without me being more involved in the build-up and I decided to take a higher position and get involved in front of goal more often.
“In doing so, I also focused on my positioning. In the past, I often received the ball from the centre backs in a straight line toward the opposition goal, but this made it difficult to avoid pressure from the opponents,” Reo Hatate explained.
“So what I have done is something I would describe as shifting sideways – what I mean is that I now try and receive passes from the central defenders at an angle. For example, if you receive a pass with your back to the opposition goal, you have to turn 180 degrees to face forward. But if you receive a pass sideways to their goal, you can turn only 90 degrees to face forward.
“If you receive the ball in a straight line, I am immediately under a lot of pressure, but if I receive the ball a little to the side, you have more speed and agility and you can strip them for pace in an instant. I also realised that at Celtic, the full backs were coming inside instead of going down the line, so if I opened up, there was space for me to receive the pass.
“Above all, because I am now in my second season at Celtic I was acutely aware that my opponents were marking me harder and harder every game. That is why a split-second move is so important. This is why I came up with the idea of receiving the ball from a different angle.
“I was able to record an assist in the League Cup Final as a result of this. As a result of this change, I have added more assists and goals to my game and the team are playing even better.
“A little ingenuity will change the scenario on the pitch,” Reo Hatate stated.