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The National (Scotland)
The National (Scotland)
Sport
David Irvine

Reason Alistair Johnston won't feature in Celtic pre-season trip to US

Brendan Rodgers has confirmed Alistair Johnston won't travel for Celtic's pre-season tour of America.

The Parkhead defender will instead be granted extra time off this summer as a result of playing for Canada in the Copa America.

Johnston, 25, is still on international duty with his country and will play in the third-place play-off in the competition this weekend. 

As a result, the right-back has had no time off since the end of the domestic season in Scotland.

For that reason, Rodgers has revealed he has granted Johnston extra time away to recover before rejoining his team-mates in Glasgow.

“Incredibly, his season is still going. It’s absolutely brilliant," said Rodgers as quoted by the Daily Record.

“He’s got obviously one more game to go at the weekend and then he’ll have a breather. He had a plan and we were probably anticipating that they might not have got to where they were.

“So he would have had to meet us there. But no, we’ll allow him to have a rest and then bring him back and then he’ll be ready to join us for the last week. He’s had a really good tournament and we’ll see him when we come back from America.”


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Celtic are due to face Manchester City, DC United and Chelsea in a pre-season tour of the US later this month.

The Scottish Premiership champions first face DC United on Sunday, July 21, then Manchester City on Wednesday, July 24.

They end their tour of America against Chelsea on Saturday, July 27.

Celtic have played two pre-season fixtures so far this summer. First, they drew 1-1 with Scott Brown's Ayr United before running out 6-4 victors in a free-scoring contest against Queen's Park.

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