There isn’t much that Callum McGregor could reasonably hope to achieve as a Celtic player that he hasn’t achieved already. His hunger for domestic silverware, for example, seems insatiable.

Another pang remains within the Celtic captain to take the club to a place where they haven’t been in a very long time - not since he himself, in fact, was emerging into the first team picture as a callow youth.

To make it to a knockout tie in the Champions League for the first time in 12 long years would tick off a personal goal then for McGregor, but would also, in his view, remove an unwanted tag from Celtic as ‘nearly men’ of the competition.

Under Ange Postecoglou, for example, Celtic won many admirers for the zest and attacking verve with which they approached Champions League ties, even against the likes of the mighty Real Madrid, but they couldn’t quite turn creditable performances into anything as tangible as progress from the group stage.

The expanded format, along with a greater ‘maturity’ that has been cited by current manager Brendan Rodgers, has allowed Celtic to position themselves on the brink of the playoff round of the competition, with a win over Swiss champions BSC Young Boys tonight all-but guaranteeing they will end their long wait to grace such a stage.

And there is no doubt what that achievement would mean to McGregor.

“A lot, obviously,” he said.

“We've tried and failed pretty much most of the time. It's a big step for the club. Everybody wants to be a part of it.

(Image: Andrew Milligan - PA) “We've done ever so well so far, but we don't want to be the nearly team. We feel like we've got a team here, a profile of player and squad that should be getting success.

“It's now down to the players to prove that and hopefully we can do that on Wednesday night.

“At the end of the eight games, people will just see whether we qualified, if we're not qualified, and then they'll just forget about the performances. So that's what I'm talking about, about being a nearly team.

“If you can make the tangible step of getting to the knockout phase, then everyone sees there's progress there, not just from the players' point of view, because we feel like we have made progress. We need to back that up with something tangible as well.

“And that's about the learning and the growth. You want to be a team that is successful, that can get to the next phase and try and get even further than that.

“So, we've done a lot of good work, and I think with the work that we've done and the performances that we've given, if we do fall short now, then that would be a sore one for us, because we have been so good.

“The longer format means you have to be good for longer periods, but it also helps us as well, so there's been a lot of learning, even in the first six games.

“So for us, we want to get over the line, because we feel like we deserve to be.”

McGregor knows though from bitter experience that you don’t always get what you feel you may deserve in this competition, and nothing will be handed to you either.

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That’s why he won’t allow even the slightest bit of complacency to creep into the Celtic dressing room ahead of this game, being as it is against the side sitting without a point in last place of the 32-team league phase.

“Not when you get to this level,” he said.

“You can be bottom of this Champions League group, you'd still be a good side.

“So we know how much quality is in this Champions League and we've experienced it time and time again.

“We've looked at them on the video, we've studied the way they want to play. They've got some athletic boys, good quality, and they're an aggressive team.

“So, if you're complacent against that, then you're going to give yourself some problems.

“It's about us being the aggressor in the game. We want to take the game to them, obviously, being at home. We want to get the crowd involved.

“But we know for sure they've got quality, and we have to be close to our maximum level to make sure that we win the game, and that's where we want to be.”

The ideal scenario for McGregor of course would be for Celtic to score an early goal and then see Young Boys swept away on a Celtic Park tide of euphoria, but if that doesn’t immediately come to pass, he has stressed the importance of the crowd staying with their team and retaining their patience.

(Image: Andrew Milligan - PA) Manager Rodgers chose his moment a couple of weeks ago to hammer home that point, and McGregor feels the message will have gotten through.

“I think everyone's learning at the level, I think even the crowd are learning as well,” he said.

“We'd obviously spoken about that, the move that led to Daizen's goal in the [Club Brugge] game where we go back to set up the next phase of the attack, and it actually leads to a goal.

“We know in this competition you can't just attack, attack, attack because you'll get picked off, you'll make a slack pass, and teams can kill you 75 yards for their own goal. They can still make three passes and score, so we know that that's the level.

“So, you have to be good with the ball and pick and choose your times to attack.

“It's the players, we have to bring that energy, we have to bring the quality. The crowd will respond to that anyway, but the game is 90 minutes, so you can't just attack all the time, you have to be smart with that as well.

“Like I said, everyone's learning at their level and the crowd are always part of that as well. But the big onus is on the players to make sure that we give them a performance that they'll be happy with.”