Celtic star Aaron Mooy sacrificed almost £200,000 in lost wages to help Australia qualify for the World Cup after being ready to call it quits on his career, his manager Graham Arnold has revealed.
Mooy has impressed at Celtic since his move from Chinese club Shanghai Port in the summer and will be an important part of the Socceroos' World Cup hopes. But Aussie boss Arnold revealed he was convinced Mooy was set to quit football in the summer after his unhappy spell in Chinese football which was severely disrupted by Covid restrict ions.
And Mooy had to make a huge financial sacrifice to play for Australia in their vital World Cup qualifiers in June. Shanghai refused to release him for the games because the Chinese government enforced two weeks of quarantine and an additional 10 days of self-isolation for anyone re-entering the country, causing Mooy to reach his lowest ebb. Arnold recalled: "I think he was pretty much done.
"I was over in Scotland, and before I went there, texted him, like, ‘What are you doing? Where are you at?’ Because he wasn’t back from China. His club wasn’t making it easy for him. Mentally, he was shot. He sent me a text: ‘Arnie, do you really need me?’ I said, ‘f**k yes. Absolutely, mate, we need you.' It cost him about 350,000 Australian dollars [£196,446] in lost wages.
The Chinese just didn’t pay him while he was with us,. He's fantastic for us. Some leaders shoot their mouth off - they’re yelling all the time. Aaron’s one of them who leads just by action.
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"We all know he doesn’t talk much. But he’s a fantastic leader. Even in that game against Peru, when I took our captain Maty Ryan off – I didn’t tell him where to put the captain’s armband, or who to give it to...he just walked straight to Aaron and put it on his arm. That’s the respect that he has from the boys."
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