Yesterday at Livingston I watched as our kids were beaten, comprehensively, by the home side. I waxed lyrical about this young team last month, and even thought they might shock us all by going the distance in the tournament. Hope and expectation collided with reality yesterday, and no mistake. Our players were out-muscled but not outplayed. They were stronger, more physical, and more technically skilled … but our kids didn’t quit.
The reaction of the supporters was to give the kids the applause and encouragement they deserved. They were badly out of their depth, but they fought to the end. The second half was a much closer contest. They had heart and energy right to the finish, and this will have been a great learning and development experience for all of them.
I have to be honest, I love the new Irn Bru Cup.
I think the format is excellent. The idea of allowing Colts teams into the tournament is superb. Although they only played three matches, our boys will know from doing so that there’s a curve in the class of the opposition which gets steeper the further into the tournament you go. Their collision with real quality will have hurt some, but there’s no gain without a little pain and in the long term it’ll do them good.
It was the reaction of the crowd that made me think about the Champions League and the matches to come. I’ve read a lot of concern over us being “embarrassed”, but no-one suggested that the kids were embarrassed yesterday. They simply came up against a side that was better than they were, in every department. There’s no embarrassment in that, it’s the nature of professional sport. Why would we treat the Champions League experience as any different?
What does “embarrassment” mean in terms of a tournament like that? The teams we’re coming up against routinely inflict heavy defeat on their opponents in domestic football. Manchester City destroyed Steaua in the first leg of their qualifier. Do you think the experience traumatised the Bucharest fans? No, they simply realised they’d come up against a team with more firepower and class than they themselves possess.
In the Champions League, so will we.
Barcelona and Manchester City are light years in front of us on the park; that’s reality, and there’s no getting away from it. What expectations do we have from those games? Is anyone really going to suggest, in the aftermath of a heavy defeat, that we did the wrong things? That we played with the wrong team? That a different tactical approach or line-up would have made a blind bit of difference? Sometimes the God’s smile on you. Sometimes they don’t. An early break of the ball, a moment of inspired magic, these things can change games … but what wins out more often than not is class. Quality. The overall strength of the side you’re facing.
It’s possible to hope for a big performance and a world-shaking result without actually expecting one, but the football tribalist in every one of us balks at the idea of being on the end of a heavy defeat, no matter the calibre of opposition. It’s understandable, but it’s also pretty daft. Stewing over the 6-1 game in the Nou Camp is daft; I remember that night and the sublime football Barca played. I won’t even blame the flapping Efe Ambrose for the scale of that defeat. Some of the football we faced was magnificent, and before, and since, I’ve seen Barca do the same to far better teams than the one we went there with that night.
If it happens again I won’t like it. I’ll hate it, in fact, but I’ll be unable to deny that it was a reflection of where they are and where we are. It won’t be like the night Mowbray lost everything against St Mirren. This is no shame in being well beat by a vastly superior team.
We have two choices over there and in Manchester – the home games are different, and they’ll take care of themselves. No side should ever feel easy coming to Celtic Park, and my frustration would be a little harder to contain if we lost heavily there – those choices are to try to keep them out, by sitting behind the ball, or to take the fight to them.
I know Brendan will try to attack them, to hurt them. I expect the worst, because of that, but I don’t think that decision would be naïve or hopelessly idealistic. These teams are just as capable of dismantling a packed defence as they are of hurting you on the break. I’d like to see us play some football over there.
Nothing could be worse than to endure a “damage limitation” exercise that gives your goalie a sore back picking the ball out of the net.
Either way, I’m going to try not to be disheartened. Yesterday, when Livingston made it 3-0, I realised our kids weren’t going to win this tournament after all, that it had been a huge ask, that their competition was going to end right there in Livingston, and after that I enjoyed the game more, and I started looking at the players on the park based on what they brought individually, at who rose to that level and who couldn’t, and my mate and I had a good discussion about the players from the youth ranks who have graduated to the first team squad, and what makes a good player with potential into one who makes the grade.
It’s impossible to feel anything other than pride in our kids for the way they performed yesterday. What would it take for the majority of us to feel pride in our first team, short of snatching something from those massive matches? Perhaps we should think on that a little before the games get underway, because this is, after all, what we signed up for. To play the best, to give ourselves the best possible challenge.
And boy, oh boy, we’re definitely going to get it.