Tonight, Scottish Football, and Celtic received a miniscule co-efficient boost when Aberdeen went through to the next round of the Europa League in spite of a shocking display in Luxembourg. Last season’s SPL runners up lost 1-0 in a scandalous display where “tactical genius” Derek McInnes brought on two defenders to hold onto their aggregate lead.
Scottish football needs all of its clubs to advance in Europe.
I was pleased to see Hearts progress last night.
An evening where one of our clubs goes out to a team from a nation like Luxembourg is little short of a catastrophe; no two ways about it. It negatively impacts on every club in the land, and although I would be taking an almost perverse satisfaction in the result if this was Sevco (no chance of seeing them in Europe for a while) I would know on some level that it had hurt us and would impact on our future.
Aberdeen won the first leg by 3-1, with two very late goals saving their blushes in the home tie. Tonight’s game was nothing short of abysmal. That Scottish clubs still routinely struggle against dreck like this is horrifying. Our professionals are superlatively compensated for their efforts.
The home team tonight was comprised of part-timers; the equivalent of a Scottish Third Division amateur club.
Remember these aren’t even Luxembourg’s league champions.
Nothing will disguise how rotten this display was, or that this game remains an embarrassment on the European stage. The national teams travails are nothing compared to the frequent disasters endured by the club teams. Over the years some of the results have been nothing short of disgraceful, the kind that would have seen managers in nations with more moxie terminated on the spot. What makes it especially shameful is knowing that McInnes would have survived the full-on calamity Aberdeen flirted with tonight.
That suggests our teams expect to lose, even against such opponents.
No-one at Celtic should be entertaining such notions.
Our game against Gibraltar’s Lincoln is a formality, or it should be. We ought not to be overly afraid of the clubs waiting for us in the next round either, but then Aberdeen would probably not have feared this draw when it was handed to them, only for them to come so close to horror.
Today I was labouring under the illusion – and I don’t know why – that the European signing deadline was tomorrow. Actually, it’s tonight but Celtic will be able to add one player to the squad up until the day before the game itself. I’ll be happy if we manage to. I expect it. I actually do expect it tomorrow.
The simple truth is that our reserves ought to be capable of going through with room to spare.
Aberdeen ought to have done the same, but I watched the game and it was diabolical stuff. The irony is that Aberdeen were excellent in the same competition last season, and were knocked out by a very decent Spanish side after they’d skilfully dispatched a Dutch club.
This tonight was nothing like that.
It was unacceptably bad.
In the end they got through; their opponents celebrated not only a moral victory but their first ever European win.
McInnes and his players ought to be ashamed.