Daizen Maeda’s fitness 'was talk of Bayern Munich dressing room'

Cameron Carter-Vickers revealed Daizen Maeda’s fitness was the talk of the Bayern Munich dressing room when the two sides clashed in the Champions League play-off.

The Japan international scored in the 2-1 first-leg defeat against the German giants at Parkhead and helped run Bayern close in the return game, where a 1-1 draw – through a last-gasp goal from Alphonso Davies – took the Bundesliga giants through 3-2 on aggregate.

Maeda grabbed a double in Tuesday night’s 5-1 William Hill Premiership home win over Aberdeen to take his Celtic goal tally to 25 this season and Jota, skipper Callum McGregor and substitute Yang Hyun-Jun were also on the scoresheet with Dons substitute Shayden Morris scoring a consolation for the visitors.

Carter-Vickers recalled how the non-stop Japanese forward’s name came up in a chat with Bayern defender and former Tottenham team-mate Eric Dier in Germany.

He said: “After we played Bayern I was talking to Eric Dier – just having a general chat about the two games and stuff like that -, and he said that after the first leg, all the Bayern players were talking about Daizen and how much he runs and the kind of energy he puts into a game. It is incredible.

“I think he said they got the running stats up in their changing room and everyone was just talking about how much high-speed distance he’d done and stuff like that.

“Physically, in terms of his running power and capacity, I don’t know if anyone in the (Celtic) squad could get to that level to be honest.

“I think it’s something unique to him that he has naturally, but when you see a guy working that hard, it definitely makes you want to work hard and make sure you’re doing a shift as well.

“I don’t know if I would say there has been improvement with him – he’s definitely peaking at the moment.

“Whether that’s fitness wise, as I said, he’s always on the move, extremely fit and always running.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen an improvement. We always knew he had that quality and he is showing it now.”

Maeda has remained something of an unknown character off the field since signing from Yokohama F. Marinos in 2022 and rarely gives interviews to media in Scotland but Carter-Vickers offered an insight.

He said: “Obviously his English has improved since he’s been here. I don’t know if he just decides not to talk or what, but he’s a funny guy actually, he’s quietly funny.

“He’s a little bit of a prankster.

“Just little things, like I say, he doesn’t necessarily talk too much, but his mannerisms and stuff like that, he definitely likes a little laugh.”

With 10 fixtures remaining, Celtic are well on their way to retaining the title but Carter-Vickers believe the performance against Aberdeen was far from their top level.

He said: “The first half, we didn’t actually play that well for being 3-0 up.

“In the second half we had more control of the game and obviously it was disappointing to concede, but I thought we controlled the game better in the second half.

“We want to continue to play well and get better and grow as a team.

“There’s 10 games left, so we want to win all of them. We want to perform well in all of them and our focus is going into each game and trying to perform to our maximum.”