Celtic is all about nights like tonight. This is what we’ve waiting for.

The last couple of days have once again brought the Ibrox crisis into focus and given us all another glimpse at a chaotic football club which never seems to get anything right. Between the manager doing his Monthy Python routine and the players giving the fans stick for giving them stick, it’s all a bit of a disaster.

In the meantime Celtic does its thing, continuing to progress, continuing to proceed with the plan and we are, today, preparing for our biggest game in a long time, and the mood over here in Germany is certainly reflected back home; the fans are confident and very much looking forward to the game.

And why shouldn’t we be? Listen, nobody thinks this will be easy. The Germans are an outstanding side, and even having conceded seven goals in their last two games (in contrast to our scoring eleven in the last two games) we know not to think otherwise. Nevertheless, we’re feeling good about this and with good reason.

Our confidence might prove misplaced but it Is not unjustified. We’re capable, and therefore we are entitled to be confident. Whether we win or not, this is a team in the ascendant, by far the best in Scotland and hopefully now on our way to being a club that can make a mark on Europe again.

That’s what tonight is all about; about reaching for the next rung of the ladder, about taking our shot on the big stage, where we all think and hope we belong instead of being chained to Scottish football. This game where we are so dominant is also acting as a drag weight on us and the only way we’re going to improve is by performing on the big nights like these.

What I think is remarkable is that this is now the accepted wisdom amongst the fans; we’re all saying the same thing and all looking towards those broader horizons. Just winning domestic games and titles is not enough for our supporters now and this is where we’re ready to be judged. Even as recently as a couple of years ago there were a lot of our fans who saw European football as a nice addition to the calendar, a bonus, and not as something we should necessarily be striving for.

In 1943, a US psychiatrist called Abraham Maslow proposed a framework which he called the Hierarchy of Needs. I have more and more come to think of our supporters in the context of what he believed. He said that we start out with a series of basic needs; food, shelter, warmth. Then we seek security and safety. Fom there our needs evolve into more complex and sophisticated areas, starting with “belonging and love” and going up until we reach what he calls self-actualisation and then transcendence.

Celtic fans have gone up through our own hierarchy of needs following this team of ours and we’re at the point now where our previous ambitions are being revised upwards. We’ve gotten so used to winning here at home that we now thirst for a new challenge and that’s a quite amazing evolutionary step for us, and it’s both fraught with dangers and at the same time fills us all with confidence and hope.

The mess across town means that we’ve got no realistic challenger here at home. And as football fans we do want some sort of challenge because otherwise what’s the point? Don’t get me wrong, I am never going to get bored watching us play spell-bending football which our rivals can only dream about and dancing on their grave will never get old. But … we all want more now, don’t we?

Tonight, we will find out how close we are to fulfilment. I can’t wait for it.