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Newcastle United will face Scottish giants Celtic in a pre-season friendly at Parkhead next summer.
As per Mail Sport, the Magpies are set to return north of the border on Saturday, July 19 in preparation for the 2025-26 season. Last year, Eddie Howe’s side visited Rangers before flying out to the United States to take part in the Premier League Summer Series.
Had things worked out differently — and maybe this is a long shot — then it could have been Howe in the Celtic dugout. The 47-year-old turned down their managerial role in the summer of 2021 before months later succeeding Steve Bruce at Newcastle.
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Indeed, it was only last week Howe refuted claims he “bottled” the Celtic post in an interview with former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan.
Howe said: “Yeah, so during that period that I’d had out, I’d had a few job offers, but I’d said I’m not considering anything for a year. That year had passed and Celtic came up and I was immediately attracted to the job. I thought, “Wow, what an opportunity. What a football club”.
“Great people as well. The people I met were unbelievable. So there was no downside for me, but I had to get my staff together. For me, if I was to go into a football club, I could have gone in on my own and worked with the staff that are there.
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“‘I felt I needed to go at my strongest. My strongest would have been with my team, so that’s Jason Tindall, Steven Purches, Simon Weatherstone and Dan Hodges. These are important people to me.
“So I’d sort of made my decision. I was really keen to go. Jason had left Bournemouth, but I couldn’t get them together. I couldn’t get the team to all agree. And it wasn’t necessarily I needed every single one of them. But of course, that’s an important dynamic.
“I didn’t feel that was right for me to take the opportunity. In that moment it would have been wrong for Celtic as well, I think. So I declined the offer.”
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