Following a good start to the domestic league season including in a 4-0 win against Rangers, Celtic were brought down to earth by Real Madrid.
It’s been a decade since Celtic last made it through the group stages of the Champions League, but hopes for this season had been fairly high. After having won the league title back from Rangers at the end of last season, they’ve already started this season with a bang, winning their first six straight league matches.
The league results have been excellent, with 25 goals scored in those six matches, including nine at Dundee United and four against Rangers in their last match, just last weekend. They’re already five points clear at the top of the table. Nothing’s done nd dusted yet, but their fans couldn’t have asked for a better start to their domestic league season.
But this is the Champions League, and this is Real Madrid, the club who vulcan death-gripped their way to a fourteenth Champions League win last season with a series of performances which felt at times like manifest destiny in action. Having become the first team to become the champions of European club football because they always knew they were going to, they provide the most daunting opposition imaginable for any team’s opening fixture.
And it can hardly be said that Glasgow isn’t significant to Real Madrid. Of all those fourteen wins, possibly the most precious was their 7-3 win against Eintracht Frankfurt at Hampden Park in 1960 when, on a gusty night in front of more than 127,000 people, a team containing Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas played some of the greatest football this tournament has ever seen. They would only win the tournament once in the next 38 years.
There’s history in this competition at Celtic Park, too, of course. They became the first team from these islands to life the European Cup in 1967, reached the final in 1970, and the semi-finals in 1972 and 1974. They know a thing or two about big European nights there too, the atmosphere set by a deafening rendtion of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, ten minutes before kick-off.
On nights like this, Celtic Park is as noisy and rowdy as a football ground could be, but the realpolitik of football in the 21st century remains as indomitable as ever. Celtic had their chances. Early in the second half, presented with a low cross when unmarked and six yards out, Diazen Maeda tried to shoot with both feet at the same time and ended up dribblling the ball feebly…
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