UEFA Champions League: Celtic 2 RB Leipzig 1
From Cahair O’Kane at Celtic Park
WHEN Gianni Infantino took his rack to the Champions League’s safest house, the two-in, two-out group stage, you couldn’t have been sure how it would work out.
While wider judgement will remain in reserve until at least the first edition is over, for Celtic it’s working out just fine.
A lofty 13th in the table, daring almost to look up not down. Above Real Madrid, above AC Milan, above PSG, above Bayern, above Atletico, above Barcelona (albeit the last three have the game in hand tomorrow).
Most impressive of all is parity in goal difference, considering they’d leaked seven in Dortmund.
In Europe, they’ve always looked at home at home.
Four played, two wins, one draw, nine scored, nine conceded.
They’ll take that Gianni, thanks very much.
For a lot of the first half hour, particularly the 15 minutes either side of Christoph Baumgartner’s stooping header, they were in a state of hypnosis that it took Leipzig old boy Nicolas Kuhn to lift them from.
On Guy Fawkes’ night, he brought the fireworks.
The city had been lit up for two hours before the game, one pyro display after the next exploding above the statue of Jock Stein if you got your camera in the right position.
Brendan Rodgers had pleaded with the Green Brigade not to bring any into the stadium. With UEFA already on their case and two more home games in their next three in Europe after this, they didn’t need anything to damage or dampen what is one of Celtic’s greatest strengths.
There are things about a Champions League night in Glasgow you can only know when you know. Go the Gallowgate, not the London Road.
The Sarry Head flag hangs as Back Home In Derry blasts out.
Colour co-ordinated cages on the windows and bald heads behind them in Bar ‘67; the manicured beards of a different clientele and generation next door in the Hoops Bar; the Wee Man’s Bar full of wee men.
The last mile is bar-free.
Celtic Park is empty until half 7 and then it’s a sea of well-oiled green and white, meeting the expectations they’ve set of themselves.
On German soil, they’ve never won a game, losing 12 and drawing three. Their last visit could have haunted them but the resilience in Bergamo shook them quickly out of what could have quickly become another European nightmare.
But this is Glasgow.
Home.
A place where they can kick their shoes off and not have to worry quite so much about the solidity. Where different things are demanded, that there be an expression of themselves. When the game started to play into their hands like that, it really opened up and they showed the best of themselves.
Since Kris Commons’s crossbar-and-in penalty gave them sweats on top of sweats 11 years ago, they’ve waited for a night that would push them back into the company of the elite’s elites.
Kuhn’s double just before-half time sent the crowd into a frenzy and then they had Victor Wanyama produced to pull a £15,000 winner from the drum and the place went into overdrive.
In PJ Morrison’s book ‘Welcome to Paradise’, one chapter tells the story of Cal, the blind fan whose brother would talk him through games.
He went through an emotional roller-coaster the famous night Wanyama headed them to victory against Barcelona.
In the chaos after he scored, Cal slipped. He felt a hand on his shoulder and the same voice in his ear that had mysteriously presented him with a photo of his late father that day.
“Steady son, you’ve got enough to contend with without breaking your neck too,” the voice told him.
There were a few in danger of it when Kühn got ahead of Bitshiabu to fire home a stoppage time second that sent Brendan Rodgers’ side in leading 2-1.
To say that had looked unlikely 15 minutes earlier is an understatement.
For the ten minutes either side of Christoph Baumgartner’s stooping far-post header, they couldn’t get their foot on the ball.
The chaotic early atmosphere had been left off the boil and Leipzig were threatening to not just pull out the plug but to cut the lead.
Schmeichel had scrambled to save from Openda moments before the goal. Trusty had to go full-length to stop another break soon after. Another corner to the near post, this time Orban’s glancing header flashes just wide.
It felt like Celtic were crying out for a John Hartson to just stick his post in the ground, get a ball at his feet, pop it off, win a free kick, something, anything to break the momentum.
Instead, Kuhn went one better. At no point had they really looked like scoring and when he cut in 25 yards out, you wouldn’t have said he did either. But the finish was perfection. Two of Peter Gulasci wouldn’t have saved it.
By the half’s end, he had moved on to nine goals and ten assists for the season, after just 16 games. There’s a reason they may well spend their January ignoring phone calls from anyone south of Hadrian’s Wall.
His second was instinctive, his movement taking him ahead of Bitshiabu at the near post, but it was all about the energy in the squeeze led by Kyogo and Maeda in the corner.
Leipzig tried to play out through it, even threatened to get out, but they lost it where they didn’t want to lose it. Hatate’s delicate pass, Taylor’s sliding cross, Kuhn’s ruthless finish.
It silenced the drum in the Leipzig corner that banged relentlessly for an hour. It was hardly heard again, a combination of its silence and the home crowd’s increasing lack of it.
Die Roten Bullen’s disillusionment at the potential of making it four from four without a win in Europe started to look like a reality they hadn’t envisaged at the start of the campaign.
From the moment Kuhn equalised, they went into a shell. The longer it went on, the stronger Celtic got and the more Openda and Sesko and Nusa allowed their wings to be clipped.
Celtic’s dainty attacking qualities really began to shine. Triangles, triangles everywhere. Hatate to Maeda to Engels to Kyogo, to feet, to feet, to feet.
They weren’t quite hammering the door down but a Celtic third was always a greater possibility than a Red Bull leveller.
It came from a mistake from Gulasci, spilling the cross at the feet of Reo Hatate, whose finish took a moment to register in the ground. It almost took for him to start celebrating as the crowd, who’d earlier begun to celebrate one that was deflected wide, hesitated.
They could have had more. No matter.
The pre-match tifo quoted Dominic Behan’s The Patriot Game: “I read of our heroes. I wanted the same.”
More of the same would not only please them, but it would send them into a knockout stage for sure.