Celtic kick off their Champions League campaign tonight at Paradise under the lights against Slovan Bratislava. European nights are always special at Celtic Park and tonight Brendan Rodgers will fancy his chances against a team who came through the qualifiers to dine at the top table of European football.
Buses and Boats & Trains and Planes will be busy today with Celtic fans who regularly make the pilgrimage to Celtic Park for home games. League, Cup or Euro games the familiar faces can always be seen in and around the ground on match days.
I don’t expect there to be a clamour for tickets from strange faces tonight before kick off. A few seasons ago when Real Madrid came to town everyone wanted to be in Celtic Park at kick off. Celtic under Ange Postecoglou performed well that night but in the end fell short.
While Ange is concentrating on domestic matters this midweek down South. The current Celtic manager, Brendan Rodgers was in a confident mood at yesterday’s press conference. Happy in the knowledge that he has brought in the quality he wanted and has hinted that he wants to add more quality when the transfer window re-opens in the winter.
The new format should suit Celtic with four home games that Celtic should be competitive in and confident of winning. It would be great to see Celtic Park become the fortress it once was in Europe when our home record was impressive against the big guns of European football.
Celtic have looked really good in Scotland so far this season and have yet to concede a goal in the league and another clean sheet would be most welcome tonight along with 3 points to kick off the campaign before facing the big guns of Dortmund on our first Euro away trip of the season early next month.
With a strong squad now in place and competition for places up for grabs. Brendan Rodgers may keep the same starting 11 from Saturday’s win over Hearts but one person who will be chomping at the bit to get in on the action will be Paulo Bernardo after his impressive performance against the rangers he had to be content with a place on the bench at the weekend.
He faced the press yesterday and I am sure he will play at some stage in the game but I think the trio who start in the middle will be Callum McGregor, Reo Hatate and Arne Engels who have all turned in good performances recently.
Kick off is 8pm at a SOLD OUT Celtic Park and the game will be shown live on TNT, Premier Sports, RTE 2 and streamed on Celtic TV.
Andrew Milne is Editor of More than 90 Minutes, Celtic Fanzine
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