Celtic winger Liel Abada facing up to four months out with injury

Celtic winger Liel Abada has been ruled out for up to four months after picking an injury on international duty.

The 21-year-old has been a first-team regular so far this season under Brendan Rodgers and started in the win over Rangers at Ibrox in their last league game.

After being called up to the Israel squad for their Euro 2024 qualifiers against Romania and Belarus, he suffered an injury in training and missed both games.

He is now set to miss all of Celtic’s Champions League group games and is not expected to back in contention until early next year.

Manager Brendan Rodgers confirmed the injury on Thursday.

He said: “He’s gone to London today for a scan but we think it’s going to be round about three to four months.

“He picked it up at the end of training in a shooting exercise.

“It’s a real shame for us because he’s done well over pre-season and as you can see he’s started in a lot of the games since I’ve been here.

“We’re really disappointed but it’s a squad game so we’ll have other players to come in.

“He signed a new deal and he seemed happy and I was looking forward to continuing his development because he has lots of areas that he can improve on.

“It is a shame but he will work hard and get back and we will use him for the second part of the season.”

Despite being mostly used from the bench last season, with former boss Ange Postecoglou preferring to start with Jota and Daizen Maeda in the wide areas, Abada still played a big part in Celtic’s treble success and contributed 14 goals across the three competitions.

The news of his injury will come as a blow to Rodgers who has just named him as part of his 25-man European squad on Tuesday.

However, with wingers including Yang, Luis Palma, Maeda, James Forrest and Mikey Johnstone still included in the squad and youngster Rocco Vata also available, the manager might feel he is well covered in that area.

Winger Marco Tilio, who is now back in training, could also be potential replacement after missing the start of the season through injury.

Rodgers did have some good news on the injury front ahead of the visit of Dundee in the Premiership on Saturday, saying: “Reo Hatate will be back, which is great news for us, he has trained.”

“With some of the other guys it’s just a case of when to put them in.

“Marco Tilio is also back in training now, but he has missed all of pre-season so we are just waiting for the right moment for him.

“Cameron Carter-Vickers is doing very well and hopefully well on schedule to be back at the beginning of October. Maik Nawrocki will be a little bit longer, Kobayashi is back now training as well so we are just starting to get players back now which is good,”