Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink has been given a special dispensation by Marco van Basten to remain with Celtic until the end of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League title race, instead of joining up with the rest of his Holland teammates to prepare for Euro 2008.

The striker was named on Tuesday in his country’s 30-man squad by van Basten, who is coach of the national team. There were fears that scenario could have seen Celtic lose Vennegoor of Hesselink for the final league game with Dundee United, following the Scottish Premier League’s decision to put the conclusion of the championship back four days to May 22.

However, the Dutch FA (KNVB) confirmed yesterday that van Basten will allow Vennegoor of Hesselink to miss four days of the training camp in the Netherlands, although the Celtic forward will probably have to miss out on the friendly with Ukraine on May 24 in Rotterdam because he will have joined up too late.

“Mr van Basten has agreed to allow the player to stay with his club, and as soon as he finishes in Scotland, he will come to Holland,” a spokeswoman for the KNVB said. “The national training camp begins in May 19 and every other player will be there.”

Van Basten’s cosmopolitan squad is drawn from leagues in Spain, Germany and Italy and face a rigorous preparation that includes other friendlies with Denmark on May 29 and then Wales on June 1, before heading off to the finals. Vennegoor of Hesselink, who scored in Holland’s 4-3 win over Austria last month, has ambitions of being in the Dutch starting lineup for the opening Euro 2008 match with Italy.

Celtic’s other striker, Georgios Samaras, was named in the Greece squad for the Euro 2008 finals. The defending champions have a friendly against Cyprus on May 19 but Samaras has already told Otto Rehaggel, the coach, that he is staying in Scotland to finish the campaign with Celtic.

Samaras, Vennegoor of Hesselink and the rest of the Celtic team were lavishly praised yesterday by Gordon Strachan for their energy in ressurecting the title ambitions of the champions. The Celtic manager declared that, after 52 games, including ten in the Champions League, the biggest problem he has with his players is containing their energy.

Strachan is delighted with the way his players have turned their situation around with two victories over Rangers to regain the top of the table. Boosted by the introduction of more sophisticated sports science, he predicts there will be no fall off in commitment when they face Hibernian on Sunday then Dundee United 11 days later on the night the curtain finally comes down on this league season.

“We have bags of energy at the moment, and those with the most energy are the ones who are playing,” the Celtic manager said. “We have plenty of energy in training but we are feeling better about ourselves as the games go on because we have put ourselves right back in the race. That is all we wanted to do. We just wanted to get back and make a challenge out of this and not go meekly.”

Celtic’s five straight wins have applied pressure to Rangers. Strachan acknowledges that there is no margin for error for either club at this stage, but argues the pressure has been on for the last ten months.

“They say that this is the results end of the season but we were told about a month ago that that was the results time as well,” he told the Celtic View. “It’s results time all the time at this club. It was even a results business when we drew with Kilmarnock in the first game of the season.”

Strachan is delighted that his men are back on scoring form, and that, for the first time in a long time, he has almost an entire squad to chose from as they prepare for the visit of Hibernian. “They always give us a hard game and in heads-to-heads this season we have won one each and drawn the other,” said Strachan.

Explore Football

• Euro 2008

• Premier League

• Football League

• Scotland

• European Football

• International Football

• Live Match Tracker

• The Fink Tank

• Fantasy Football