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Celtic eye windfall after Chinese takeaway
(The Sunday Times)
Updated: 2005-09-05 09:07

ON Friday afternoon there was a run on fives at the Celtic superstore. The figure was in demand for singular use from those wishing to show their support of Du Wei by having his number put on the back of their replica shirt, and also as part of Shunsuke Nakamura’s squad number of 25. Sales will not stop there, though. That little black number is in demand from Glasgow to Galway and from Shanghai to Saitama. With these two signings, Celtic have gone global.

As Du Wei, the Chinese centre-half signed on a contract that will run for four years and cost Celtic a fee of £720,000 if it survives a five-month probation period, was introduced to his public on Thursday, Peter Lawwell, the club’s chief executive, was talking business. He was discussing an opportunity for Celtic to arrive as a “global brand”. Hitherto their outreach programme has never really stretched beyond North America. Here, in territory rabidly contested by Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool, a reservoir of Celtic support is almost guaranteed, the result of generations of immigrants from Scotland and Ireland holding true to the footballing roots of their forefathers. The source is drying up, though. Lawwell described Celtic’s market on either side of the Irish Sea as nearing “saturation point”. The solution? A potential market increase of 1.5 billion, the combined population of China and Japan. Celtic are already planning a tour of the Far East, and with Du Wei and Nakamura in their first team are likely to be received without the growing suspicion that greets other European teams keen to conquer the market.

This is not a new trick. Hidetoshi Nakata, a recent signing for Bolton Wanderers, was the first football superstar to emerge from Japan. He signed for Perugia from Belmare Hiratsuka for £3.8m in 1998 and, in the two years that followed, over 100,000 Perugia shirts with ‘Nakata’ on the back were sold in Japan. During that same period the Italian club were attracting gates of 10,000. When they sold him to Roma in 2000 they cleared a profit of £9m, with image rights contributing considerably to the valuation of a player who was far from an unqualified success at any of the five Italian clubs he played for during six seasons in Serie A.

Fan Zhiyi, the former captain of China’s national team, played for Crystal Palace and Dundee in Britain but did not make the same impact as midfielder Sun Jihai, who arrived with him in London before a £2m move to Manchester City, where he remains a decent draw to the folks back home. Right now, though, his popularity there is eclipsed by that of Celtic’s new No 5. Since replacing the injured Fan Zhiyi at the 2002 World Cup to mark Ronaldo at the age of 19, Du Wei has been the most popular footballer in China, which puts him in the running for most popular worldwide.

“He has leadership qualities and a lot of charisma on the pitch,” says Edmund Chu, the agent that brought him to Glasgow. “In China the fans adore him. ”

“Everyone is very supportive of me coming over here,” added Du Wei. “In China, everyone hopes they can go abroad to a big club and improve. Then when they go back to represent the national team their performance is better. In China we just don’t have the experience of playing against the top teams.”

If Du Wei fulfils his potential and becomes the leader that many believe he can, the rewards could be astronomical for Celtic. When the baseball star Hideki Matsui steps to the plate to bat for the New York Yankees, the advertising board behind him changes to a display in Japanese Kanji symbols. The man they call ‘Godzilla’ back in Tokyo has become New York’s Japanese tourism ambassador, while the arrival of Ichiro Suzuki at the Seattle Mariners led to over 100 of that club ’s regular season games being televised live in Japan.



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