Celtic swatted aside Estonian Champions Nõmme Kalju 2-0 in Tallinn’s wonderfully named A. Le Coq Arena last night to progress rather easily 7-0 on aggregate.
Of course, after last Wednesday night’s romp at Celtic Park progression was never in any doubt but an away win is never a guarantee for Celtic on the continent no matter who the opposition is and it was also important to keep up the winning momentum which now sees us having won four on the spin since returning to competitive action in the 1st Qualifying round against FK Sarajevo last month.
Bizarrely the host’s manager Roman Kozhukhovskyi thought his side suffered ‘an injustice’ last night but hey managers will say the strangest things to either shield their side from criticism or keep up morale. But the reality is that’s just complete and utter nonsense.
Celtic dominated possession all night, restricted the home side to few chances and should have scored more themselves.
Our new £7 million centre back Christopher Jullien made his debut and was towering, composed and comfortable on the ball all evening. He’ll have far more testing games than this of course but it was a nice start and he could even have scored at one point.
Both Callum McGregor and James Forrest were rested for the night with the likes of Bain, Ajer, Edouard and Christie dropping to the bench and in came not only Jullien but keeper Craig Gordon, Lewis Morgan, Mikey Johnston, Olivier Ntcham and in a real surprise Tony Ralston at right-back for a rare appearance.
Celtic took the lead on 10 mins when a Ntcham advanced to the edge of the box before feeding Johnston on the left byline who’s drive across the face of the goal evaded the keeper and looked to be tapped in by Leigh Griffiths only for it to be diverted into the net by the sliding Aleksandr Kulinits. As much as the Celtic TV commentary wanted it to be Leigh’s I’m afraid it has to go down as an own goal.
Thereafter the game pretty much had a malaise about it with Celtic happy to dominate possession and the Estonians happy to keep the score down. That was until the second half with Craig Gordon required to make a few half-decent saves before Celtic went back through the gears in the closing stages.
As mentioned earlier Jullien missed a chance with a header from six yards and then on came sub Marian Shved who within seconds of stepping onto the pitch was through on goal only to be denied by keeper Pavel Londak who began replicating some of his outstanding shot-stopping form from last week.
Both Lewis Morgan and Scott Sinclair were also denied by two wonderful saves from Londak who has certainly been Nõmme’s outstanding player over the two legs and Jullien had the ball in the net but it was ruled out for a high boot.
But just when it looked like we would have to settle for only the one up stepped Shved to score on his debut with a pearler into the keeper’s top left-hand corner of the net from the edge of the box in what turned out to be the last kick of the match on 93 minutes.
In the end, it was all rather easy peasy. If only all European ties were like that. Alas, they’re not and we’ll have a far sterner test in the 3rd Qualifying round in the form of Romanian Champions CFR Cluj.
Managed by Romanian football legend Dan Petrescu they have won their last two league championships back to back and five in total in their history.
Formed in 1907 they were really just a provincial club for their entire history until a major investment in the early 2000s by local businessman Árpád Pászkány helped push them back into the top flight where they have not only remained ever since but been frequent title challengers and trophy winners.
They nearly went to the wall back in 2014 due to financial insolvency but staved off liquidation and in early 2017 were taken over by wealthy business magnate Marian Băgăcean who subsequently appointed Petrescu that summer and they haven’t really looked back since.
Last season they pipped the far more well known Steaua Bucharest to the championship by two points to retain their title.
They lost only 3 out of 36 games, drawing 11, scoring only 54 but conceding a mere 20 so safe to say their tactics are to defend and keep it tight.
Though this approach seems conservative as a manager Petrescu certainly wasn’t as a player scoring 71 goals in club football alone as an attacking full-back and 12 for his country.
He played for the great Steaua team of the ’80s where we won four league championships and was a European Cup runner up playing alongside the legendary Gheorghe Hagi in 1989. He was also part of the team that eliminated Rangers from the 87/88 European Cup Quarterfinal a tie which featured Graeme Souness’s shocking challenge on Iosif Rotariu.
After a spell in Italy, he then spent eight years in England enjoying great success in an exciting Chelsea team alongside the likes of Ruud Gullit, Gianluca Vialli and Gianfranco Zola.
As a manager, he had success previously in his homeland with the now-defunct Unirea Urziceni who won the league under his stewardship as well as in Russia with Kuban Krasnodar who he led to the second tier title and promotion and in China with Jiangsu Suning whom he guided to the national cup in 2015.
He’s visited Glasgow before in a management capacity having led Unirea to a 4-1 pasting of Walter Smith’s Rangers at Ibrox in the Champions League back in the autumn of 2009.
Anyone else remember that?
Well, that was a nice stroll down memory lane but back to the present and we’ll be visiting Cluj’s compact and picturesque Dr. Constantin Rădulescu’s stadium next Tuesday for the first leg. It’s in the capital of Transylvania would you believe so expect the press to make a lot of vampire references in the lead up to the match as Celtic attempt to the put ‘a stake through the heart of Cluj’s Champions League hopes’ before ‘sinking their teeth into Cluj the following week at Celtic Park’ and so on and so forth.
So far this season Cluj have toppled Astana – who we know well and are no slouches – and Israeli Champions Maccabi Tel Aviv en route to the 3rd round so they’ve had a far harder route than we have.
But I’ll go into their European pedigree and players to watch out for next week in my preview to the first leg tie.
In the meantime, we prepare for our eighth consecutive flag day on Saturday against visiting St. Johnstone who have had a woeful build-up to the league kick-off so far which has seen them eliminated from the League Cup already after pretty shocking losses to League 1 sides Montrose and Forfar as well as to newly-promoted Ross County.
A slow summer has seen half a dozen first-team players depart – including the mercurial ex-Celtic Tony Watt – and only a few arrivals with the expected capture of former star striker Stevie May back to the club also recently collapsing.
So they don’t have their problems to seek and hopefully, we can capitalise on that and really turn them over.
Unfortunately, big Christopher Jullien won’t be able to make his domestic bow though as he’s carrying over a suspension from his time in the French top-flight last year which means we should see a partnership of big Simunovic and Ajer or Bitton returning to a back three. Either way, the emphasis should be on the attack and I’m pretty confident it will be a good send-off for Romania.
....Always A Tim! 