With a minute to go tonight, Moussa Dembele stepped up and slotted home the penalty kick that put us through, and after I’d finished doing some booty shaking I pondered how many moments like this there’ve been over the years and the reactions that had to have been sparked elsewhere as that ball hit the back of the net.
I’ll do my views on the game itself tomorrow; I’m going to share some of those reactions with you tonight.
Somewhere was a guy screaming – literally screaming – at his computer or TV, lost in incandescent rage at the luck, at the Unseen Hand, at how the Gods always smile on Celtic Park. I take a lot of pleasure from knowing he is out there.
As clear as can be in my mind I can see Scottish commentators who’ve just watched a Scottish team go through in the Champions League and guaranteed that at least one team from this fair nation will have Group Stage football in one of the two main competitions to look forward to as they ripped off headsets, broke pencils, slammed the keys of their laptops or just got up and cursed loudly and unrepentantly at all around them.
I see radios being switched off in fury and disgust. A lot of family pets are hiding under couches and beds right now, many having been given a right hard kick at the moment of magic. A lot of broken crockery litters living room and kitchen floors across the land. At least one dinner is probably stuck to the wall, whilst a guy stares dumbly at it.
I see Wee Jay Beattie, jumping around like crazy. Impromptu street huddles in the Gallowgate. A classroom full of screaming children in Thailand, thrilled to see such a dramatic ending. I see friends and family members lost in the emotion that always accompanies a last minute winning goal. I see Brendan Rodgers standing on the touchline, job done.
I see glum faces in dingy backstreet bars, wondering what this will mean in purely financial terms as we streak off into the distance on the back of this, and perhaps even greater rewards to come. I see ageing radio hacks, former journalists foaming at the mouth, people so caught up in their hate for us they can’t see past it any longer. No credit will be given to us, but none is wanted from those kind of people anyway. They can choke on their emotions for all I care.
I see Peter Lawwell, delighted that his reckless, shameful gamble has paid off in some small fashion, complacent, smug, no doubt hoping he’ll get to swan around UEFA during the main draw but wondering how much he’d get away with pricing tickets for the Europa League.
I see Moussa Dembele, who’s been in the country five minutes and was already reading crap about how he had yet to score, the traditional opprobrium heaped on a new striker at Celtic, who had enough confidence, in spite of their garbage, to step up and take a crucial penalty kick in the last minute of a do-or-die tie that was hanging on a knife edge. If there’s a better way to stick it to your critics I don’t know what that is. Delighted for him.
I see thousands of our fans hugging one another in the stands, many facing long journeys home but who’ll do them with a lot of satisfaction.
I see the Astana bench, those mouthy gits who were going to do this to us and that to us tonight, who had this tie won, in their minds, before a ball was kicked and who reacted with the petulant fury of Sevconites when it didn’t go according to plan. Two red cards were a well-deserved denouement for a side which had to win and hit one single shot at the goalkeeper all night, which, unfortunately ended up in the back of the net. But they came offering nothing. They didn’t test us at all. A Celtic playing at high gear would have run over this lot. They deserved exactly what they got and they face a long trip home to argue amongst themselves about it. GIRFUY.
I see greeting faced Sevconites trying to kid themselves on that this is somehow good news for them, and for their club, because “we’ll be distracted.” Oh yes, European football is such an awful distraction … which we’ve been able to enjoy these last few years whilst they’ve sampled the glories of Stenhousemuir and Arbroath. And you know what? It didn’t stop us winning the last couple of titles with lots of room to spare.
There’s something wonderful about a last minute goal.
Nick Hornby tried to puzzle it out, to explain it to himself and the readers, towards the end of Fever Pitch, and whilst his descriptive exploration of it is the most erudite I’ve ever read I don’t tend to think of it in terms of the emotions as they hit me; I’m usually too lost in the moment to do much more than go out of my mind, and that’s true for a lot of important goals in big games.
On the day we beat Rangers 6-2 I was pulled backwards over my seat in the stands when Lambert made it three; I remember nothing at all about the sixty seconds that followed because I had my eyes shut, just flooded with positive emotions. When I came to I was lying with my back on the concrete and a guy was apologising for stepping on me.
No, at moments like this I don’t tend to try and work out what I was thinking or feeling at all; those emotions last only moments and are gone. For some reason my mind always turns to what other people are doing, lost in their own wee swirls and swells.
Tonight I saw an especially pleasing series of little mental images.
Enjoy your own.
In Brendan We Trust.
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