Despite a minor scare in the second half Celtic pretty much picked up from where they left off a week ago on Tuesday as they dominated Bosnian Champions FK Sarajevo once again last night at Celtic Park in claiming a 2-1 victory and securing a 5-2 aggregate win and ultimately a place in the 2nd Qualifying round of the Champions League.
It wasn’t the balmy evening that I’d hoped for as instead rain intermittently pinged down – as the weather also picked up from where it had left off last week – but it made little difference to proceedings as Celtic dominated from the get-go and had seventeen attempts on goal with nine on target.
Early on Sarajevo striker Mersudin Ahmetovic had a goal chopped off for offside and in the opening stages there was a real lack of tempo to the game but Celtic ultimately upped the ante and a mazy run from Odsonne Edouard into the box saw him lay it off to Ryan Christie who scooped it high into the net beyond the despairing Kovacevic in the visitors goal on 26 minutes.
That left Celtic with a more or less unassailable 4-1 lead in the tie and it looked inevitable that more goals would come but a lack of concentration from recent signing Boli Bolingoli let Benjamin Tatar in who finished well just after the hour mark.
Any fears of an unlikely comeback from the Baltic side in the tie were laid to rest though with a quarter of an hour to go when Callum McGregor rifled in a low shot from distance and that was it all over bar the shouting.
Late on Leigh Griffiths got a run out which was great to see and a vital step in his redevelopment.
I’m glad to see the back of Sarajevo who showed little technical ability or ambition and were effectively just a bunch of hammer throwers. They picked up five yellow cards last night and there could easily have been a few reds amongst them. It was the same in the first leg where they picked up four yellows and how they escaped both ties without one dismissal is beyond me. After seeing that you look back to Jeremy Toljan’s sending off last season in the Europa League Last 32 game against Valencia and can’t help but notice clear inconsistency when it comes to refereeing on the continent.
Anyway onwards and upwards.
And by that, I mean onto Estonia where we’ll be facing the footballing superpower that is Nõmme Kalju FC who surprised just about everyone on Tuesday night by overturning a 1-0 home deficit and progressing on away goals after a 2-1 win in injury time over North Macedonian champions Shkendija.
They came out of the traps fast and scored on six minutes through Italian defender and club captain Maximiliano Uggè only for their hosts to restore their advantage in the tie thanks to an Agim Ibraimi penalty on 62 minutes. But with the whistle about to blow on Nõmme’s 2019/20 Champions League campaign up stepped Brazilian striker Ellinton Antonio Costa Morais aka ‘Liliu’ who headed home seconds into injury time in front of a rather sparse crowd of 2,500 in the 36,000 seater Toše Proeski Arena.
That means the Estonian Champions will now visit Celtic Park in six days and there really shouldn’t be much to fear.
They are coached by the unknown Ukrainian Roman Kozhukhovskyi who replaced the well-travelled Russian Sergey Frantsev after he was somewhat harshly sacked back in April having led them to only their second-ever national title last year in a league which is usually dominated by the countries biggest club FC Flora.
In fairness, it was a helluva campaign as they went through the whole season unbeaten registering 25 wins and 11 draws from their 36 league games seeing them end up on 86 points and pipping FCI Levadia Tallinn and Flora to the title by two and three points respectively.
Outside of the aforementioned Uggè and Liliu their team is composed of mostly domestic players and they play in the tiny Hiiu Stadium in the capital city of Tallinn which has a capacity of only 650. However, their home tie against Shkendija was moved to Levadia’s home ground of the Kadriorg Stadium stadium which holds a more respectable 5000 and they could even request the use of Flora’s home ground, the wonderfully titled A. Le Coq Arena which is also the Estonian national teams home venue and holds over 14,000.
I’ll profile them in more depth in the lead up to next week but this year’s campaign isn’t going so well as they trail a resurgent Flora by ten points after nineteen games and have already lost two of them. The goals have also dried up. They hit a spectacular 114 in 36 league games in the 2018 campaign but have only managed 33 so far in this one.
That aside they are perennial European qualifying rounds victims falling 4-1 on aggregate to Videoton of Hungry in the Europa League 2nd qualifying round last season and the Estonian league is rated 42 out of 55 in the UEFA coefficient with Scotland sitting at 26.
So like I say not much to sweat over on paper at least and hopefully, our squad will be bolstered by some new signings come next week too but on Monday I’ll write up a piece that will go into a fair bit of more detail about our next European opponents.
....Always A Tim! 