The midfielder has joined the Scottish champions for the season, with an option to buy included in the deal.

It resembles the agreement struck between the two clubs for Jota in 2021. The winger was subsequently sold to Saudi Arabian side Al-Ittihad for £25million earlier in the summer.

Speaking at a media conference, Costa admitted he will be keeping a close eye on all Benfica loanees.

He said: “We believe that they can become first-team players. It will be up to them to show themselves so that we can analyse whether they come back or not.”

Bernardo was one of nine summer signings made by Brendan Rodgers and the 50-year-old hopes the player will be available after the international break.

“Paulo, he’s had no football over the course of pre-season he has trained. We have to look at him,” he commented.

“He’ll go away with the Portugal under-21 and hopefully get some game time and then come back and we’ll assess it from there.”

Meanwhile, Celtic hero Chris Sutton has praised the Hoops’ ability to “win ugly” after their victory against Rangers at Ibrox.

Rodgers’ side ran out 1-0 winners after a strike from Kyogo Furuhashi at the end of the first half.

It is a result that puts the Parkhead club top of the league on goal difference, on the same points as Motherwell.

Writing in his Daily Record column, he said: “Rodgers wants silky football and has no doubt it will come but, in some respects, the manner of the triumph may have been even sweeter in the fact they had to battle and scrap in the second period.

“Patched up at the back, missing key players, boys like Scales rose to the occasion while highly-touted Rangers players flopped.

“It’s all right having the talent, but you need the traits to win ugly and do the dirty work and Rodgers’ team proved they have that quality.”

 

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Some interesting takeaways as Sky Sports announce latest batch of Celtic fixtures

There were a few interesting takeaways as Sky Sports announced their latest batch of Celtic fixtures on Tuesday.

Brendan Rodgers‘ Hoops have been on the channel three times already this season — beating Ross County, Aberdeen and Rangers in front of the live cameras.

The omens are good then as we prepare for a tasty run of televised fixtures over the coming months.

While the recently-launched TNT Sports will have full coverage of our European campaign, Sky Sports are still the home of all of our Premiership action.

We already knew that our upcoming clash away to Livingston would be shown by the broadcaster (Saturday 23 September, 12:30pm) as well as the next derby against Rangers (Saturday 30 December, 12:30pm).

Three more upcoming Celtic matches — against Hearts, Ross County and Aberdeen — were announced by Sky on Tuesday. (Sky Sports)

Our trip to Tynecastle on Sunday 22 October will be shown. However, the match won’t be in the usual noon slot. It will, instead, kick-off at 2:15pm which is a rare start as far as Scottish football is concerned.

That is almost certainly due to Sky only showing one Premier League match —Aston Villa vs West Ham — that day. We are therefore bumped to a bit later in the day. If you’re looking for an omen, 2:15pm was the kick-off time when we clinched the league at Tynecastle back in May.

We’ll visit Ross County on Saturday 4 November at 12:30pm while Aberdeen’s visit to Celtic Park has also intriguingly been chosen for Sunday 12 November.

The Dons are in Greece to face PAOK on the Thursday prior to that, so the game was always going to be moved to the Sunday. However, Sky’s decision to show the fixture while already having a Premiership fixture that day is an interesting one.

It means we’ll get a back-to-back Scottish football double-header that day — Livingston vs Rangers at 12pm and Celtic vs Aberdeen at 2:30pm.

We’re not sure what situation down south has made them go for that. But we’re not complaining.