Celtic bank most FIFA cash from World Cup

Celtic are the Scottish Premiership club to have earned most from the World Cup’s FIFA Club Benefits Programme.

The league winners collected $664,326 (£510,318) while Rangers came in second with $414,291 (£414,291). Hearts, Dundee United, Hibs, St Johnstone and St Mirren are the other clubs who had players at the Qatar finals last winter.

FIFA have promised that they will distribute a total of $209 million (£160m) ‘after releasing 837 footballers for a fixed per player daily amount of $10,950, regardless of how many minutes they played during the tournament.’

That daily amount is around £8409 and ‘the total per player is split and distributed to the club(s) with which the player was registered in the two years before the final competition.’

That means Celtic benefit from Josip Juranovic who reached the semi-finals with Croatia while still in Glasgow before his January move to Union Berlin.

Cameron Carter-Vickers, Daizen Maeda and Aaron Mooy also participated in the competition, while Jeremie Frimpong meets the two-year criteria for payment, having been called up by the Netherlands less than 24 months after leaving Glasgow’s east-end .

Borna Barisic was also part of the Croatian last four squad that also played a third-place play-off.

United had knockout stage representation in Aziz Behich as part of a large Australian group linked to the SPFL. Dylan Levitt was part of the Wales team.

Nathaniel Atkinson, Cammy Devlin and Kyle Rowles were all with the Socceroos, as was Martin Boyle despite a season-ending knee injury.

David Wotherspoon represented St Johnstone with Canada and Keanu Baccus of St Mirren was also in the Aussie team.