Celtic’s pre-season training camp in Slovenia got off to a turbulent start tonight after staff at Maribor shut the airport before the Parkhead club had landed.
The Ladbrokes Premiership champions were meant to land in Maribor tonight at 7pm UK time prior to kick-starting their pre-season tour but instead spent over an hour stuck across the Croatian border in Zagreb Airport after a last-minute reroute.
Brendan Rodgers and his Celtic players arrived at Glasgow Airport at 1pm this afternoon to board their chartered flight – which was being provided by Romanian Airline Carpatair – and were due to take off at 3.15pm.
However, due to a delay with loading the bags in Scotland the flight didn’t take to the sky until almost two hours later.
The two hour and 20 minute flight appeared to be going according to plan until Hoops stars such as Kieran Tierney, Leigh Griffiths and Scott Brown were notified by their captain that the airport at their destination had in fact closed.
They were then told that the flight would be diverted to Zagreb 125 kilometres away.
Once on the ground, Celtic’s players and staff were forced to sit about in the baggage claim area and wait for a bus to take them on the two-hour journey across the border to their training base in the small Slovenian city.
A notice on the Maribor Airport website failed to give any explanation for the decision, instead just putting a notice on their site stating the flight had been cancelled.
It is far from ideal preparation ahead of Rodgers’ first game in charge of Celtic, which will take place on Thursday against NK Celje at the Arena Petrol.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel