Celtic star Daizen Maeda has credited Hoops coach Harry Kewell as the man behind his dramatic improvement this season after admitting he's made him rethink the way he approaches the game.

Ange Postecoglou this week credited his countryman Kewell for helping with Maeda's impressive burst of form after scoring eight goals for Celtic and also providing five league assists.

And Meada has revealed how former Liverpool and Leeds United forward Kewell helped him improve his all-round game this season after taking him under his wing.

Maeda said: "I came to Celtic a year ago, but at first I didn't set any chances up at all. Even for most of this season, I wasn't the type of player who could set things up or dribble or anything like that.

"But Harry Kewell, the coach who came this season, started saying, 'You're fast, why don't you use it?'

"Just before the World Cup, I started having individual meetings with him after every game and he started accompanying me to training on my own.

"After that, I changed. He told me 'it doesn't matter if you make mistakes, just keep trying' and 'just take the initiative. If you can't do it, you can drop back' and I started to dribble more and more.

"I still don't speak English that well and I didn't want to have too many meetings - I was the type of person who used to think that I didn't even need to watch football.

"But after meetings with Harry and watching videos of my game, I realised that just by being aware of my own abilities, I could make such a big difference.

"Harry explains things clearly to me in simple English and the content of the videos are wide-ranging. It's not just scenes of dribbling, but also positioning in front of the ball, the timing of the start of the move, the course of the move, the process leading up to the goal.

"It's all very carefully selected, so when I'm on for a full match, it's quite long.

"I do that for every match, so I learn a lot. I've changed the way I look at football myself, and I'm at the stage where I'm learning the depth of football all over again."

And Maeda, in an interview in his homeland, revealed he's been studying countryman Kaoru Mitoma at Brighton and Real Madrid's Vinicius Junior in a bid to get better.

He said: "I haven't really tried to set up goals before, so I've been watching videos of Kaoru and watching the dribbling of other left-sided players. I watched Vinicius Junior the other day, mainly left-sided players, and I pay attention to how they set up. I'm also trying to test that out in training.

"I've certainly started to think about football a lot more. Once I played in the World Cup, I felt a strong desire to learn again. So I think I naturally wanted to know more about football.

"The season is going well, but I want to get both my goals and assists up to about ten for each.

"Up until now, even if I scored double-digit goals, I had no assists at all, but if I can do both, I can broaden my range as an attacker.

"I want to take it one day at a time, one game at a time so that I can become a player who can do many different jobs."