The night Celtic REALLY arrived among Champions League elite as opponents 'just stopped running'
Thirty-five days earlier they’d had the legs run off them in a Borussia Dortmund chasing. But Callum McGregor insists Celtic’s next Champions League contest against Bundesliga opposition was the night that Brendan Rodgers side truly hit their stride at the top level.
A night when the Hoops were so fast, so in sync, that the skipper reckons RB Leipzig simply stopped running and gave up pressing long before the final whistle. That explosive 3-1 victory on Bonfire Night set alight dreams of charging into the knockout stages for the first time in 12 years.
It left the McGregor convinced this group of players were ready to take the next step. That they were capable of matching the very best over the course of 90 minutes - and hurting them. October’s 7-1 demolition in the Westfalenstadion had stang for weeks and had critics predicting Celtic’s Champions League race was over before it had properly began. But the Parkhead side learned lessons and made it through the league phase of the revamped competition with a game to spare. Now comes judgement day with a third Bundesliga assignment and the toughest of them all.
If the Hoops are to stand any chance of producing a seismic result against Bayern Munich they will need to reproduce the Leipzig display. And then some. A performance McGregor agrees is the most intense he has ever been involved in.
He said: “We have to get very, very close to it. The aggressive nature of their press, they will come flying after us. So we have to be aware of that and maybe skip lines and go into the second line. That's where we were really good against Leipzig.
“The whole team was connected. Everybody was moving in sync. By the end of the night, Leipzig actually stopped running because we had every solution. The most intense performance I’ve been involved in? Yeah, I think so. Certainly from a Champions League level against a team who are renowned to come and press and be aggressive.
“At the end of the game, like I said, they almost started looking at each other and stopped running because every time they went to press, we played our way out and almost scored. That was us at the highest level of football against a really top opponent. That was everything that Celtic wants to be in Europe.
“So, to go and accomplish that against a really high-level opponent, you start to get a sense of, yeah, we're on the right track and we're doing the right thing and to play football the right way against these teams.
“The good thing is that we've sort of learned from Dortmund. Circumstances on the night, the boy hits four worldies flying into the top corner, which hasn't happened since. So, you have to understand what happened on that night as well. It was a bit of an anomaly.
“The Leipzig one was much more controlled against the ball. Sometimes you realise you've got to suffer a wee bit in shape and press at different times in the game. You can't just chase every single pass.
“Even off the back of Aston Villa, you go two down and you fight your way back into the game. So, there's a wee bit of maturity from that. When you play eight games at the level, everybody starts to feel how quick it is and tactically where you need to be and when you can press the game.
“The development of the team has been really good since the first game. Now we're much more comfortable in that Champions League bracket where we believe that we can hurt teams as well and we've shown that.
“It’s okay to talking a good game but we've actually then taken that to the pitch and shown and there's been something to show for that. Wednesday night is another chance for us to show how much we've learned throughout the league phase. We back ourselves and let's hope we have a good night.”
That being said, McGregor is well aware the quality in Vincent Kompany’s Bayern squad heading to Glasgow is another level up from anything they’ve faced so far this season. England’s all-time record goalscorer Harry Kane, who took his tally to eight this season and six in the last four games with a double against Werder Bremen on Friday night, is the first name that jumps to mind.
Then there’s Jamal Musiala, Kingsley Roman, Josh Kimmich, Leroy Sane, Alphonso Davies, Manuel Neuer... It’s an endless list of world class talent. McGregor, who got an all-too close view of Musiala’s talents when Germany handed Scotland an opening day lesson in last year’s Euros, said: “He's a top player. The Germans are full of top players. They're strong, understand the game. So, this is a real top-level game that you're going to play and the players need to be ready for that.
“We'll have to keep everyone quiet. Kane especially, he's a goal scorer, he doesn't need many touches, he's a penalty box player who just sniffs goals, so we have to be super alert of him.
“But, we're also a decent side and I'm sure that they may have one eye on the Leipzig game and they'll know what we can do. It's important that we back ourselves when we go into the game and we give absolutely everything and we leave nothing on the pitch. Then we'll see where we're at after the first leg.”
