Celtic seem to be steamrolling their way to a 4th consecutive Scottish Premiership title, sitting comfortably at the top of the table, 13 points ahead of their rivals Rangers. With only 13 games remaining in the season, Brendan Rodgers’ side looks unstoppable and might just shift their focus to the Champions League, where they face Bayern Munich in the playoff round.
The highlight of their season has been their goalscoring. Netting 73 times in just 25 games this season in the league, their attack has been flourishing with speed and creativity.
Leading the attacking front for Celtic are Japanese duo Kyogo Furuhashi and Daizen Maeda, alongside German winger Nicolas-Gerrit Kuhn. While Furuhashi played a significant role in the first half of the season, he left Celtic in the latter half of the January window to sign for French side Stade Rennais.
Maeda, who signed from Yokohama in 2022, has been the creator, providing 7 assists in the league so far, and Kuhn, Celtic’s January signing from last year, has been doing both, with 10 goals and 6 assists in the league.
Both Maeda and Kuhn possess blistering pace and consistently wreak havoc from the wings. This pace is coupled with their ability to finish chances clinically as well. The duo has formed a front line that shows relentless attacking intent.
The two recently got a cool graphic of their own, OneFootball—a popular football app—put out a graphic celebrating Celtic’s attacking efficiency. The post highlighted the contributions of Maeda and Kuhn. The Japanese with 26 goals and assists in 33 games, and the German with 29 in 33 games.
On the surface, it was just another routine social media post, but some eagle-eyed fans couldn’t help trace it to something with historical context.
If you aren’t well versed with World War II lore, it definitely wouldn’t have caught your eye, but then the internet did what it does best: connect the dots where no one asked it to.
With Maeda and Kuhn spearheading the attack, some fans quickly pointed out the unintentional historical parallel—Celtic’s attack mirroring the Axis Powers of World War II.
One fan caught onto it quick and dropped a subtle tweet, “Historically there’s been a word for this connection,” referring to One Football’s post captioned “The German x Japanese connection.”
For those less familiar with history, the Axis Powers were a military alliance formed during World War II, consisting primarily of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. They stood in opposition to the Allied Forces.
This link led to a barrage of tweets and jokes online: “It would have been wild if they had an italian striker though,” said one fan, as an Italian would truly complete the Axis power link. “They desperately need an Italian 9,” said another user.
“Bro was so close to call them Celtic’s Axis here,” said another user, referring to the One Football social media admin who would have come up with the caption.
Some users took the reference to another level: “They must be lethal down the right wing,” said one fan, talking about the Axis powers’ political allegiances, which were right-winged. “Do they both play on the right wing?” read another tweet.
It’s unlikely that OneFootball had any historical context in mind when they posted the graphic. The reference, purely a connection and creation of the internet, and probably one that you can’t look away from when you watch Celtic play the next time,
