Postecoglou not letting World Cup influence selection of Celtic team

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou will not let World Cup announcements influence his own team selection for the final two cinch Premiership matches before the Qatar event.

Aaron Mooy has been named in the Australia squad to join Japan forward Daizen Maeda in being confirmed for the major event, while Reo Hatate, Kyogo Furuhashi and Denmark Under-21 international Matt O'Riley missed out.

United States defender Cameron Carter-Vickers is awaiting news of his fate while Josip Juranovic is in a 34-man longlist for the Croatia squad and Jota is in a larger provisional squad for Portugal.

Postecoglou remains intent on taking maximum cinch Premiership points from the trip to Motherwell on Wednesday and the final match before the break against Ross County.

"Our main focus is still us and trying to maintain a level of performance while making sure we don’t over-burden any players," he said.

"For the most part we have done that. There are two or three who have probably played more than others but for the most part we have rotated the squad with performance in mind. It’s no different for these last two games.

"I will pick a team that I think will get the job done for us and gives us the best chance of success and it will be the same on the weekend.

"You obviously hope the guys who are going away come through unscathed but it’s one of these things in football, you could try and protect players from anything happening but it could happen in the first training session for their country.

"It’s better that we just go about our business as normal as possible. The aim for the players themselves, they would much rather go out and play football and feel good about themselves than go a couple of weeks without playing."

Mooy is among the midfielders who