Job done as Celtic fly over the first hurdle
The basics were bang-on. There were spectacular moments too
THESE ties are rarely about shock and awe. In fact, the only important thing is avoiding the kind of shock guaranteed to leave supporters crying: ‘Aw, for pity’s sake…’ Or words to that effect.
Celtic will hardly care, then, if even their showboating best attracts scant attention in the more glamorous corners of European football, where indifference is very much de rigueur.
The fact that their demolition of KR Reykjavik, a side of limited ambition and the talent to match, didn’t cause seismic tremors in every outpost of the UEFA family is of no concern to Neil Lennon.
Nothing his team did here was going to be ranked as the most eye-catching European result of the past few days; Bayern battering Barca did for that.
Lennon’s men were never even going to be the story of the night. That prize was always reserved for the Battle of the Evil Empires being fought out in Portugal.
Yes, last season’s Champions League semi-final taking place on the same night as this season’s preliminaries certainly makes for some interesting diary clashes.
When Albert Einstein dismissed the idea of time travel as impractical, he was factoring in the vagaries of spacetime. But not the UEFA calendar.
As everyone knows, however, the two competitions on telly last night may carry the same name but are only loosely related.
Celtic are in the other Champions League. The one with games on Premier Sports, rather than given the full treatment by official broadcasters BT.
Their aim is to get to the group stage, also known as the Champions League proper. That means getting through nights like this.
As a contest, it wasn’t much of one. Which is a credit to Celtic, who made it all look easy against opponents defending deeper than the Mariana Trench.
Proving that the lack of a crowd wouldn’t impinge on their ability to come flying out of the blocks, they were three up with indecent haste. And could have ended the night with far more than just the half-dozen goals to show for their efforts.
It’s not as if everything they did paid off. But the basics were bang-on. Take the second goal of the game, credited as an own goal. Well, as some very clever coaches have pointed out, a good low cross to the near post is worth half a goal. Celtic worked the space beautifully to create the opportunity.
There were spectacular moments, too. None better than Odsonne Edouard leaving five opponents floundering before scoring the fifth.
With Nir Bitton and Christopher Jullien left to play little triangles with Scott Brown, completely unmolested by the blue-shirted visitors, the traffic was always going to be of the one-way variety.
There was no lack of guile in Celtic’s play, though. Not with agents of chaos such as Ryan Christie, Callum McGregor and Mo Elyounoussi on the field.
What did we learn from the 90 minutes? Well, that spending a week or so kicking their heels — or knocking lumps out of a Boli Bolingoli effigy — hadn’t dulled Celtic’s senses to the point where they were in any way vulnerable.
Lennon and his men had been eager to avoid complacency in this one, pointing to Icelandic football’s general strength — certainly in comparison to Scotland — by way of a warning.
The truth is that, if Celtic harboured any ambition of returning to the biggest stage, they needed to batter this mob.
After a couple of seasons on the outside looking in, they must go further still.
Probably best to save the truly spectacular stuff for the group stage, then. Where it’s guaranteed to cause a stir.