Celtic’s training trip to the Algarve is being undertaken without any traditional media coverage.
Normally on a pre-season trip most of the daily newspapers would have a reporter in place with the club putting up a player each day to discuss the training sessions, prospects for the new season and comment on the impact of new players or a new management team.
It was easy copy for the publishers, a decent sized spread and perhaps a back-page news line with the story appearing at 10.30 pm on websites.
It seemed to be a set up that suited most parties but this year there is nothing embargoed coming out of the Daily Record, Sun, Herald/Times, Daily Mail and others as Brendan Rodgers gets down to some serious work at Celtic’s Portuguese training base.
Whether Celtic have grown tired of the arrangements or budgets can’t justify a week in Portugal isn’t known but it does follow on from BBC Scotland and PLZ Soccer not being invited to the media conference to introduce Brendan Rodgers’ return as manager.
Celtic’s in-house media have provided an interview with Callum McGregor and a 99 second training clip that gave away very little other than some younger faces promoted to train with the first team squad.
It looks like every word coming out of Portugal will be controlled by the club, the matches against Portimonense on Wednesday and Saturday will be a challenge for outsiders to cover with Twitter being scanned for anyone enterprising enough to have gained access or a vantage point.
Day 2 ☀️
Loading…🔲🔲🔲⬛️⬛️#CelticFC | #COYBIG🍀 pic.twitter.com/vIgiLrk4ht
— Celtic Football Club (@CelticFC) July 11, 2023
1 Comment
by John Copeland
Celtic should have invited the rag tabloid scoops … at £25,000 for each one of them ! As we know when they were charged that amount for the Rangers pressers ,plenty of the media outlets paid up …willingly . No problems whatsoever ,glad all over to .Missed a wee trick there methinks ….