When your team’s most recent outing has been a stirring performance and an encouraging result, the positive vibes resonate a little more strongly.
Celtic fans hardly need reminding that the 14 days covering our head-to-head with Borussia Mönchengladbach are likely to be the most crucial of the season.
Mönchengladbach are not just a very good team – the are a great club, as people of my age, who remember their “Golden Years” will know well.
An early football memory is of one of my primary school classmates asking me if I knew who was playing that night. “Borussia Mönchengladbach”, he said proud of his ability to pronounce the name someone had written on a piece of paper for him.
I went home and did the same thing. With a little bit of help from the Internet, I can tell you the precise date: 25th May 1977.
At that time, I was oblivious to the fact that it was the tenth anniversary of Celtic’s European Cup triumph in Lisbon (though the commentators would surely have said so through the fuzzy sound and apologies for picture quality that only seemed to add to the crackling drama of such nights) but the final against Liverpool that night was a clash of two European giants, in the days when the game seemed a little more pure.
Some of the names from that team, though, resonated through the ages, Berti Vogts, Rainer Bonhof, Allan Simonsen (one of the early greats of Scandinavian football), Uli Stielike. A certain Jupp Heynckes, who also played, would go on to managerial greatness.
Liverpool called on giants like Phil Neal, Jimmy Case, the late Emlyn Hughes, Terry McDermott and, of course Kevin Keegan.
Liverpool and Keegan would win the cup, before the poster boy of English football went to join SV Hamburg, replaced by our own “King” Kenny Dalglish, breaking the hearts of Celtic fans everywhere.
 |
| Allan Simonsen: The original Danish Dynamite |
Keegan would take over from Simonsen as European Footballer of the Year, while Dalglish would usurp Keegan's place in Liverpool's history.
It’s apposite to recall these days now to remind ourselves that Borussia Mönchengladbach is a club of real European pedigree who will draw on that historic tradition over this Champions League campaign.
So forget Mönchengladbach’s away form – any notions that we will face anything like a comfortable task should be scotched right now. These two matches will take every scrap of our endeavour, every moment of skill and above all, unrelenting professionalism from every Celtic player on show.
It will also require every decibel of relentless singing and chanting that the Celtic faithful can deliver.
A win tomorrow will not be enough, despite some complacent comments to the contrary.
I believe that two wins is too much to hope for, just as I believe that Mönchengladbach will not leave the competition without recording at least one win.
Mönchengladbach don’t yet have a point on the board but we – let’s not forget – have a negative-7 goal difference, to their five. Going into the last two matches without a single-point advantage and an inferior goal difference would leave us perilously close to exiting Europe.
So a win tomorrow is vital; a win by two goals would be amazing. That would leave us all but guaranteed third place, should we secure a draw in Germany.
Failing that, if we should end up with a win each, at least levelling that goal difference would give us more than a fighting chance.
 |
| Spare a thought for Oskar Halliday and his family. RIP |
Arguably the most dangerous outcome would be a narrow win at Celtic Park leading to the complacent believe that we would be almost home and dry, as far as European football is concerned.
The last round of matches is always a lottery as, should Barcelona or Manchester City have won the group before the last match, they would most likely rest several of their top players.
So, we should be cheering for our friends in Catalunya, too, (and maybe we’ve made new friends in Manchester), as it could be vital to our interests that City face Mönchengladbach, needing at least a point.
Brendan Rodgers isn’t talking about the Europa League and he’s to be commended for that. But our immediate job is to secure third place. Then we can dream.
* And a final note, with the notable exception of Kevin Keegan’s old German team, every Celtic fan I know has always spoken of how warmly received the fans have been in Germany. I expect that to continue in Mönchengladbach, so I hope that their fans will be accorded the welcome they assuredly deserve – until the game starts.
No comments:
Post a Comment