Last night, Lenny led us to a very credible, very good, 3-1 victory away from home in Europe, and whilst the tie appears to be done you can never be too careful.
We’ll have to be on our toes at Celtic Park, but if we’re being entirely honest most of us expect us to go through.
In light of that, I thought it would be interesting to look back over the records of previous managers and how they got on in their first European ties.
The results were a mixed bag.
There was some in there that I had forgotten … and others I wish that I could.
That, last night, actually ranks as a good performance. It was a big ask for Lennon and this team, still not fully up to speed yet, to get a result as good as that.
Not every manager of Celtic has been able to come in and make such an instant, and positive, impact.
So how does he measure up?
Take a look and see …
Brendan: The Shock On The Rock … But Normal Service Soon Resumed
There aren’t many football results that actually have their own Wikipedia page, but the Shock Of Gibraltar does.
Looking back on it now, it seems surreal.
At the time I think I was about as angry over a performance as I’d ever been in my life.
Nobody thought it would define the Rodgers era; the guy was way too good a manager to let a setback like this knock him off course, but boy oh boy it was some setback. The Wiki page describes it as one of “the greatest shocks in European football history” and there is zero doubt that this is the case.
It wasn’t even the result that stunk so much, it was the whole display.
A player called Lee Casciaro did the damage; it is probably not a great shock to learn that he was the first ever player to score an international goal for Gibraltar and that it came against Scotland. His strike in the 48th minute ought to have woken us up, but it didn’t and the rest of the game was all about a sense of mounting frustration and anger.
The manager could not have imagined a worse star. He could not have crafted it better if that had been the intention all along; a performance to put all of our rivals at ease and leave them vulnerable to what was to follow.
If you showed people that game and told them that one of the sides involved in it would go on to win a domestic clean sweep without losing a single match there is nobody who would have bet on that team being Celtic, which makes what we did all the more remarkable.
Lee Casciaro himself cheered on every Celtic victory that season.
“It only made what we did look better and better,” he said.
The only game he didn’t cheer on was the second leg, where a 3-0 win at Celtic Park put the world to rights again and started the bandwagon rolling on one of the most incredible seasons we’ve ever witnessed as fans.
Ronny Deila: Easy In Iceland For The Scandavian Boss Man
Ronny Deila’s European debut came in Scandinavia, but not in his native Norway but in Iceland, against KR Reykjavik.
The 1-0 away win wasn’t vintage football, but then it didn’t have to be.
The fans were pleased to get competitive games underway, to see what we could do.
That match will not go down in annals of Celtic history except for one thing … and we should be forever grateful to Ronny Deila for this.
The only goal of the game was scored by a debutant.
If you don’t already know his name it was Callum McGregor.
Ronny is one of the reasons this kid is such a fantastic player for us now, and when we celebrate nine and then ten in a row that man deserves to walk onto the turf at Celtic Park and take his bow, and the appreciation of the fans for his contribution to the cause.
And that contribution was stellar.
The return leg, at Celtic Park, was even easier. We put three past them and eased into the next round.
Virgil Van Dijk scored twice and Timo Pukki got the other. The nightmare – and the ensuing hilarious chaos that was to follow – of Legia Warsaw was next up … but for that night anyway, it was all rosy in the garden and Ronny had got off to a good start.
Neil Lennon: The Beating In Braga … A Bad Start For Lenny
It was an unusual one this, because Neil had already been in the Celtic job for a few months when this game was played.
Having taken over from Mowbray, he had only just been confirmed to the job on a permanent basis when we headed off to Portugal for the first European tie of the season. Had we known what awaited us, we might not have bothered getting on the plane.
To call the night in question a disaster is putting it mildly.
We were run over.
The performance was disgraceful, and Lennon returned to Glasgow fuming with the side.
Defensive lapses proved extremely costly and we never really looked in it.
At Parkhead we lost the first goal – which ended it for us there and then – and finally secured a 2-1 win thinks to Gary Hooper and Efrain Juarez (there’s a name I bet you’d forgotten).
We dropped into the Europa League, where another, even greater, disaster befell us; we drew Utrecht, beat them 2-0 at Celtic Park and only needed to defend well to close out the tie … we lost the away game 4-0 on a disastrous night in Holland.
It was the last time we failed to reach the Group Stages of either European competition.
Lennon learned from that, though, and how … just two seasons later we were beating Barcelona.
Tony Mowbray: Moscow Mug Us … But We Somehow Turn It Around
Would you believe me if I told you that Tony Mowbray had one of the best starts as a Celtic manager that you could hope for? At least in terms of the tie overall? Because he did, of course, although the first leg was a fairly awful one.
We drew the Russians of Dynamo Moscow, who rolled into Celtic Park probably expecting that a draw was the best they could do.
But they stung us that night and gave the fans early reasons to be worried about the man in the dugout.
They secured a 1-0 win on our home ground, the stadium where the best in Europe had feared to tread.
But a miracle of miracles was to happen in the second leg; we showed up hungry and ready for business although it looked like an uphill climb; as the media were keen to point out, we hadn’t won an away game in Europe for 23 games, spanning six years.
Yet we did it. Somehow we did it. Scott McDonald levelled the tie just before half-time, from a wonderful Andreas Hinkel cross, and then – joy of joys – in the last minute, big Georgios Samaras popped up in injury time to put us in the next round.
The Russians would have been shell-shocked.
Celtic were then drawn against Arsenal, and I think most of us were realistic about the chances of getting through that one, and we didn’t.
We did drop into the Europa League Groups, on the other hand, where we played six games, won one, drew four and lost two … not entirely different from how a certain other club did last season … but of course they got praised for that whilst we got justifiably pilloried.
The slow descent for Mowbray had begun.
Gordon Strachan: The Nightmare In Bratislava … But We Nearly Work A Miracle
Gordon Strachan had the kind of start as Celtic manager that gets people sacked. Listen, there are times when I am guilty of hyperbole, but this is not one of them. If the Shock of Gibraltar was a dreadful result – and it was – then where does this one compare?
We call it The Nightmare In Bratislava.
They are called Artmedia. That night they beat us 5-0.
The Red Imps story was bad because of where Gibraltar is on the UEFA co-efficient.
But ask someone even today where Bratislava is and they will struggle to give you the answer. We now know, of course, that Slovakian football has produced some wonderful players, but it’s fair to say that none of the legends was on the park that night.
They gave us the run-around and no mistake.
I remember everything about that night, from where I was watching the game to the dull, throb of fury and resentment against the club, the manager, the players, even Martin O’Neill for leaving us in this condition, to the horrors of the media on the following day.
I’m certain that the shock of it still reverberates around my brain somehow and that I will wake up screaming from the memory of it eventually.
Yet the home leg was almost one of those nights you would tell your grandkids about. We were excellent that night at Parkhead, and but for the crossbar we might well have pulled off the single biggest turnaround in European football history.
Our 4-0 victory was so near and yet so far.
As with Lennon, and later Brendan, Strachan had started with a shocker.
But it would all come good, and not just domestically. Within a year he was doing what Martin O’Neill had never done and getting us out of a Champions League Group which included Manchester United, who we defeated at Celtic Park on an epic evening, courtesy of one Shunsuke Nakamura.
Martin O’Neill: The Massacre Of Luxembourg … Two Legs, Eleven Goals
Martin O’Neill strolled through his first European tie. Of course he did.
The man with the highest win ratio in Celtic history was never not going to walk through a tie like that one. Who remembers the team we played? If you’ve read the headline you’ll know where they are from, but what were they actually called?
They were called Jeunesse Esch, and we gave them a torrid time of it over the two legs, the first of which was on their home turf where we casually dispatched them by 4-0. A guy called Lambert scored the last goal, and a guy called Lubo scored the first two.
Sandwiched in between them was the really important one; his name was Henrik Larsson, and it was his first appearance for us in Europe since the night on Lyon when he broke his leg. This was the opener in a season which would bring a domestic treble and, for the King of Kings, a 53 goal haul
. The Magnificent Seven was back in business.
We won the home leg 7-0, for an 11-0 aggregate score.
Can you name me the player who scored a hat-trick in the home tie? Or the player who scored a double?
In a team with Sutton and Larsson in it, it was Mark Burchill who grabbed the three and the soon to be forgotten Eyal Berkovic who scored twice. Vidar Riseth got one and the final goal went to Stan Petrov, another player who was on the brink of a colossal campaign.
Everything was already coming together nicely for Martin’s first season in charge.
John Barnes: A Stroll Through South Wales … Ten Goals Started Our Most Awful Year
The Barnes- Dalglish season haunts our club, even now.
It was the Year of Scheidt, in more ways than one. Yet it started with an easy wee stroll through the meadows.
I remember it well, because I decided to stay in the pub for a few beers with my mate after the away leg, lost track of the time, and finally stumbled back to an irate supporters bus where nobody was in any mood to ask us what we thought of the game and the performance of the team.
That night – a 6-0 away win at Cwmbrân Town – put us on the rollercoaster and we didn’t even know it. We’d have strapped our seatbelts on tight if we’d had the first inkling that night of what was coming at us like a freight train.
Larsson scored twice that night, Berkovic got one, Brattback got one, Ollie “Bombscare” Tebily – scored a goal on his competitive debut (his actual debut was a friendly against Leeds, where he put the ball in his own net) and so too did the guy who was to have such a mammoth impact on John Barnes’ managerial career; Mark Viduka.
The home time was another stroll, and you should win an award if you know who the scorers were that night; Brattback got the first, youth player Jamie Smith got our second, the third was scored by Johan Mjallby and the fourth by Tommy Johnson, a striker I always liked a Hell of a lot and who would later go on to score the goal that sealed the title in Martin’s treble winning campaign.
That night at Celtic Park we looked like a side with a lot of goals in it, and a lot of options.
We played Israeli club Hapoel Tel Aviv in the next round and got past them, and were promptly drawn against French club Lyon.
The first leg was on 21 October 1999 – my birthday – and I remember nothing about the game except the score (1-0 to the home side) and the horrific injury which felled Henrik Larsson, our talisman even then, and which accelerated that whole season’s slide towards oblivion.
Some say we were heading there anyway, but that’s pretty revisionist.
Because we had played nine league games up to that point and won eight of them and lost just one. The victories including a 5-0 win at Pittodrie, a 4-0 home win against Hearts and a crushing 7-0 hiding that we handed out to Aberdeen at home. The sole defeat was a 2-1 loss at Dundee Utd.
Larsson’s injury was a seismic shock to the whole club.
We never, ever recovered from that.
By the end of November we’d played six more games in the league … and we’d lost three of them, including one at Ibrox.
That’s when the cracks started to show.
Joe Venglos: Irish Eyes Were Very Nearly Not Smiling … But We Go Through
It is fair to say that before a ball was even kicked that there were some …. question marks over Dr Joe Venglos and his appointment as Celtic boss. The season before had ended with the ultimate joy killer, and the resignation of double winning Dutchman Wim Jansen.
Dr Jo was not the guy we had expected the club to appoint.
The whole summer had teased us with big, interesting, names.
That the club then stuck in the dugout this quiet, unassuming gentleman from parts unknown was not entirely appreciated … not for a long time after it either.
And he almost got off to the worst of all possible starts, a beginning that would still tower over Lincoln Red Imps and Artmedia Bratislava had it not come together.
We started Dr Jo’s year with a home qualifier against St Patricks Athletic, and it was an awful, awful, awful game of football, ending in a 0-0 draw that made the away leg much more of a nail-biter than you ever want your club to have on that stage.
Yes, we won the second leg by 2-0 – courtesy of strikes from Brattback and Larsson – but boy, it was close.
We averted a real shocker, one that hilariously we would see the likes of in Luxembourg some years hence, when a club called FC Progrès Niederkorn over-turned a 1-0 away deficit to put the Ibrox NewCo out of Europe in the worst result ever suffered by a Scottish club, bar none.
Dr Jo’s team would not survive the next round, as Dinamo Zagreb put us out of Europe early, but he was to bequeath us one of the best footballers ever to grace Parkhead when he signed his “old mate” Lubo Moravcick for a mere £250,000.
And Hugh Keevins probably still thinks we should have bought John Spencer instead.
Wim Jansen: The Dutch Master Sees Off ICT … Welsh Dragons Can’t Stop Celtic
The Year We Stopped The Ten started in Wales, with a nice wee 3-0 win over Inter CableTel.
Wim Jansen hadn’t had much time to bed in his team, but it was a good, and capable, start and one which got us off on the right foot for a tumultuous season.
The scorers that night were Thom, Tommy Johnson and Morten Weighorst. The performance wasn’t scintillating, but it didn’t have to be. It was about getting the job done for the second leg, and the second leg at Parkhead was a 5-0- stroll.
Any idea who the goal-scorers at Parkhead were? God, this is one to test the quiz specialists with in years to come. Thom got the first, Darren Jackson got the second, Tommy Johnson made it three, David Hannah (I know!) made it four and a striker called Chris Hay made it five.
I actually had to look him up; he was a youth academy graduate who played for us more than 25 times and scored less than a half dozen goals.
He actually went on to a full professional career, some of it in England before he returned to Scotland where he carved out a nice wee legend for himself at St Johnstone (yes, THAT Chris Hay!) under Billy Stark.
We all know, of course, what happened to Wim. He entered Celtic folk-lore as the manager who finally ended the Ibrox quest for ten in a row and for that he’s another guy we should be inviting as a guest when we finally close the circle and do our own.
Tommy Burns: Beating Batumi … Except …. Well … There’s A Catch
I’ve decided to end with Tommy Burns, not because there’s not data on the Lou Macari nightmare or Billy McNeill’s first campaign in his second managerial spell, but because Tommy’s first European tie as manager is something of a curiosity.
You kids who have grown up seeing us sweep everyone aside, why do you reckon that Tommy Burns’ European debut as a manager, when we knocked Dinamo Batumi out of the Cup Winners Cup is such an oddity, such an unusual one?
It’s because Burn’s European debut didn’t come until his second season in charge.
Oh yes, that means exactly what you think it means.
Tommy Burns took over our club when we were at such a low point that we hadn’t even qualified for Europe in the season before it.
Macari left us fourth in the league (so did Tommy in his first season, by the way, but we won the Scottish Cup and that put us back on the road again) and still had the cheek to try and sue the club for wrongful dismissal.
Anyhow, as to the games, Celtic won the away leg by 3-2 courtesy of two strikes from Andy Thom and a goal from Tom Boyd.
Another Thom double, a goal from Simon Donnelly and the final one from Andy Walker (yes, that Andy Walker, unfortunately, in his second spell as a Celtic player which, under Tommy, was to be mercifully, ruthlessly cut short) secured the 7-2 win.
That season still pains me to this day. We lost one league game in that whole campaign and didn’t win the title, because we also drew eleven times. Tommy left Celtic for Reading, but came home again because it was the only place he wanted to be.
What we owe that guy cannot be properly quantified.
He will never be far from our memories.
