Celtic captain Callum McGregor was an unused substitute for Scotland on Tuesday evening.
Steve Clarke’s men were 4-1 losers away to France, as the likes of Kingsley Coman and Kylian Mbappé consigned the national team to a third defeat on the spin.
Of course, that stat is pretty harsh given that the two prior matches were also against elite-level opposition in the shape of England and Spain. Furthermore, Clarke made eight changes for Tuesday’s friendly in Lille, with McGregor one of those to drop out.
Excluding games missed through suspension or injury, the France fixture was the first time McGregor had spent 90 minutes on the bench since March 2022. That was also a Scotland game — a friendly draw with Austria.
That’s 84 matches in a row he’s played in when fit. The remarkable stat is that he started in all 84 of those games. So Tuesday was also the first time he’d been benched in 18 months.
So, yes, our skipper must have been wondering just what he was meant to be doing as the game kicked off and he found himself sitting rather than standing. Nevertheless, it’s good news for Celtic that he got a rest.
McGregor is going to be a huge player for us between now and the next international break. We will stand a much better chance of some big results if he is fully firing.