Show me Du Wei to Celtic glory

Shanghai’s latest footballing export Du Wei has made his first appearance in the jersey of his new club, Glasgow Celtic, turning out for the reserves in a 1-1 draw with Aberdeen.

It’s too bad though that, yet again, the Scottish media have got him mixed up with his Asian teammate, Japan’s Shunsuke Nakamura. This Glasgow Evening times story about Du Wei has a picture of the Japanese international instead. Oops.

Du Wei impressed on his first outing — and was taken off after sustaining a knock to his head — but Celtic manager Gordon Strachan conceeded that he would need time to adapt to the rigors of the Scottish game before breaking into the first team.

Sporting Life reported Du Wei as saying: “I really enjoyed my first game in Celtic colours. I felt I coped well but after I went back to China I was not training much so I found it a bit more difficult the longer the game went on.”

Strachan said: “Du Wei won’t play for a while, he got a whack on the head in the reserves but he’s fine. He’s got a black eye but he played on and it didn’t bother him and that’s what I wanted to see.

“He’s brave and he’s impressed everyone so far.”

Meanwhile Sunday was D-Day for Du Wei’s former club, Shanghai Shenhua FC who headed north to Tianjin where they needed to take all three points if they were to have any chance of catching China Super League leaders, Dalian Shide. (Shanghaiist hasn’t been able to find the score of that match yet.)

The dongbei side are nine points ahead with five games remaining. That means next Sunday’s clash between Shenhua and Dalian could be a championship decider — watch this space.

This post originally appeared on Shanghaiist.