The Path Of Champions

So, today our Champions League fate is generally known, with us heading east should we manage to defeat Stjarnan, a simple enough task, you’d think, as we’re already a couple of goals up from the home leg.

On paper, the path here is relatively straightforward, but as we all know at Celtic Park that’s when things tend to go rather turbo.

We need to be focussed in Iceland and then again in either Azerbaijan or Montenegro if we’re going to qualify for the next hurdle.

It’s that next hurdle that bugs me, as it should bug every Celtic supporter.

Six games just to get to the Groups?

It’s a joke, and our inability to navigate it last year was partly because we were being asked to play those games before our team had properly got up to speed in their domestic game, and against sides already well into their league campaigns.

This is a common gripe, but no more valid because of that.

UEFA has done a lot to make sure more Champions make their Champions League, but this is still a competition designed to make rich clubs richer by rewarding those who can afford to spend their way to success.

The second they expanded the tournament to include teams who finished third, and finally fourth, in their domestic leagues it was always going to end up like this.

On one hand we can’t really complain.

We’ve come up against a giant in the revamped qualifiers precisely once; when we drew Arsenal in 2009.

That aside, when we’ve been knocked out it’s been fair to say we’ve been the architects of our own destruction.

For all that, it’s ridiculous that we have to go through it.

Of course, UEFA has moved ahead to sweeten the deal, and if we come through the next round we’ll have guaranteed qualification for the group stages of the Europa League even if we don’t manage to get ourselves into the main event.

That, at least, will give the fans a taste of continental football all the way to Christmas … but it’s a poor substitute.

Good players want to play on that bigger stage.

Our ability to offer them that is one of things that still makes us a great selling point for those who might not automatically fancy Scotland.

The harder it is for us to navigate that path the tougher it is to sell those guys on the concept.

There’s a part of me that gets this, of course, that sees the hole in the theory that it should be an easier road.

To reach the Champions League we have to win the SPL.

That’s not as easy a task as a lot of people might say, but it’s a lot easier than coming second or third or fourth in the Premiership.

We have to beat, along the way, teams like Motherwell and St Johnstone.

To reach the big stage their sides have to beat the likes of Spurs, Newcastle and Villa every week not to mention doing the necessary against one another.

In the context of that, it might seem odd for us to be complaining, and if we do reach the Groups then no-one at all will be moaning about the star-studded nature of the games we play.

Yet for all that I gripe.

And I moan.

And I lament.

The tournament is called the Champions League, after all, and there have been years when the team which has won it weren’t even their domestic title winners.

For all the glitz and the glamour, I do think that devalues the competition somewhat.

In spite of everything, this is the time of year when we get ourselves all worked up, either about not seeing a way of making it or because the path ahead looks pretty decent, and although we don’t know what lies ahead of us in the final matches should we manage to get through the next three games, it does look as if we’re on our way.

It may be too earlier to start turning our thoughts in the direction of the Groups themselves, but there are places we’ve never been and teams we haven’t faced in this version of the competition before, such as Real Madrid.

There are places, too, where we don’t want to go; Chelsea if it can be avoided, and anywhere too far east.

Like Azerbaijan actually.

All that said, European football is supposed to be an adventure, one where you’re sent off to play against exotic teams in strange sounding places, against players whose names you can’t even pronounce, in stadiums that look like 1930’s relics.

At least in the early rounds.

After that you dream of the top arenas, the top stars, the best managers.

I am already starting to.

You can tell I’m excited right?

What about yourselves?

Should we make it, who do you want us to get? And avoid?