Hatem Abd Elhamed seemed to be alone. Yet the chances are he’s not in terms of his situation.
It was intriguing to hear Neil Lennon outline the reasons behind Celtic’s humane decision to let the defender return to Hapoel Be’er Sheva.
This wasn’t just a business deal. It was about a person as well.
Lennon acknowledged the fact that Elhamed was going through a really difficult time. The player’s wife and son were back in his homeland and he was on his own.
The key phrase is that “he was struggling with life away from the training ground and stadium.”
Elhamed would, surely, not be alone. This has been a strange season for everyone. Fans, clubs, management, staff and players. Football is staying on the go. The matches are being played, but the rest of it isn’t normal.
Playing the games without supporters is, of course, the most blatant change to the landscape. Of course it is, that’s what we all in the public see each week and we can understand that massive alteration. It’s there in front of our eyes.
But maybe it’s what we don’t see that is the most telling factor.
How often do you hear about team spirit? Bonding? Friendships are garnered in changing rooms at training or in cars as three or four boys pile into the one motor for the drive to training in the morning.
That’s all gone. Boys have to stay apart in changing rooms, they can’t travel together. And when there isn’t any football happening, what on earth do they do?
It’s hard enough for Scottish boys who have lived here all their days, so it must be brutal for those who have come into this situation and country just recently.
Football is a global sport, but integrating into your culture is key.
Jonjoe Kenny spoke last week upon signing about his time in Germany and how he learned the language to fit into the place. To feel at home with his team-mates and when he was out and about in the town of Gelsenkirchen.
It’s tough enough going to a new country. What must it be like for boys here who have been trying to adapt when they can’t get out of the house?
Managers tell you constantly players need to be happy and content off the pitch to perform to their best on it.
Celtic have a few newbies. How must Vasilis Barkas be adapting, for example? This guy has played Champions League at a huge club like AEK Athens and coped with their bearpit atmosphere at games, yet at Parkhead, he’s looked lost and weak.
But when you hear about how Elhamed was feeling, and he had been here for almost a year before lockdown, it gives an insight. Could that be holding the Greek keeper back?
In a strange country, unable to get out and mix. Stuck looking at four walls night-in and night-out thousands of miles from home.
Shane Duffy is 29 years of age from just across the water and Lennon even spoke about going to see him just to make sure he was feeling alright as he was stuck at home on his tod. Must be even harder for a Diego Laxalt or an Albian Ajeti.
This is not just a Celtic thing. It’s everywhere. Rangers are flying. Through the first-half of the season, virtually everyone was at top form, maybe with the exception of Ianis Hagi.
Interestingly, the young Romanian spoke at the weekend about just being stuck in his flat watching TV all the time and how wonderful it was to get his parents over for the festive period and the lift it gave him.
Any coincidence he’s had an upswing in form since? Maybe not. But probably yes.
Ibrox colleague Cedric Itten had spoken a month or so prior to Hagi about it not being easy adapting in the current situation. Guy Melamed mentioned it at St Johnstone.
Guys struggling for form or confidence can’t even get up to speed playing for the Development as there is absolutely no football on the go at all bar the top divisions.
It’s easy just to judge players simply by watching them on the park, but maybe there has to be more understanding about the fact they are going through the same lockdown struggles as us all.
People’s work is suffering in all walks of life. Footballers, upon hearing the Elhamed case, aren’t any different.
