On the night when the Champions League stars came back out in Glasgow, five-star Celtic got their campaign in the competition off to the perfect start as they blew Slovan Bratislava away at a rocking Celtic Park.
The hosts had passed up a series of chances in the first half, but a crashing header from Liam Scales had them ahead at the interval.
A quickfire Kyogo Furuhashi goal after the break and an Arne Engels penalty seemed to ease any creeping anxieties, before a moment of slackness allowed Kevin Wimmer to score for the visitors and send nerves a jangling once more.
The fans needn’t have worried, as Daizen Maeda and substitute Adam Idah scored to give Celtic an emphatic victory against the Slovakian champions, laying down a huge marker of their intentions to progress beyond the league stage of Europe’s elite competition.
Here are the talking points from a delirious Celtic Park…
Celtic now look tooled up for Champions League level
In his pre-match press duties, Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers was almost giddy with excitement at what lay ahead of his team, and it wasn’t just the famed, raucous atmosphere that characterises these nights at Celtic Park that had his juices flowing.
Rather, a large part of that enthusiasm stemmed from the fact he felt he was entering this arena as tooled up to face the challenges of it as he had ever been while leading the club. Indeed, a glance at the teamsheet would give credence to the theory that this was the strongest Celtic side to embark on a Champions League campaign for many, many years.
There was club record signing Arne Engels – well, if you’re going to shell out £11m on someone, he’s going to play on nights like these – as the icing on top of a prodigiously talented Celtic cake, and what Rodgers may just be cooking here is a team capable of reaching the playoff round of this competition at the very least.
All that being said, the game of course is not played on paper, and tougher challenges than Slovan lie in wait. Still, while the gap to the really top continental teams may be an impossible one for Celtic to bridge, it feels that for the first time in a long time, they aren’t bringing a water pistol to a gun fight.
Scales far from out of place
For all the flashier players and more glittering names on display though, it was the rather less heralded Scales who settled any Celtic nerves and made the first big statement of the night, timing his near post header to perfection to meet Engels’ corner and power a header into the roof of the net via the shoulder of Slovan keeper Dominik Takac.
It wasn’t so long ago that you would have struggled to find anyone who believed Scales even belonged in a Celtic jersey, let alone at Champions League level, and it may have been thought that for all the stellar work Scales did last season in an emergency situation, the arrival of Auston Trusty in the summer would be a precursor to the Irishman being phased out of the starting XI on the big occasion.
Scales is clearly having none of that though, and Trusty may have to be patient to dislodge a man who has become a more than trusty mainstay of the Celtic backline alongside Cameron Carter-Vickers.
Celtic finally find their cutting edge
There were one or two head-in-hands moments in front of goal for the hosts in the first half that sparked fears that the yips that have sometimes plagued them – and particularly Kyogo - on these nights in the past had made an unwelcome return.
The Celtic striker passed up two gilt-edged opportunities in the opening 45, hitting keeper Takac when put in on goal just after the opener, and blazing over the bar after the high press had caught Slovan out on the edge of their own area.
He was hardly alone though, with Maeda also ballooning one over early on and then heading straight at the keeper from six yards or so.
Just after the interval though, Kyogo finally got it right - though the brilliant work of Nicolas Kuhn on the wing meant he could hardly miss – chesting home from a couple of yards.
Celtic will hope that goal will settle him down, and that Maeda’s does too, the winger producing a composed finish at last after an intricate passing move had cut the visitors apart for the fourth of the night.
Shape behind the ball and slackness will be punished
It may be churlish to be critical of the Celtic defence after such an emphatic victory, particularly as the goal they lost on the night was the second one that has flown past Kasper Schmeichel all season, but it was a bit of a shocker from a Celtic perspective.
Three up and cruising, some slackness crept in, with Cameron Carter-Vickers of all people kicking it off with a sliced clearance, before Greg Taylor hoofed the ball up in the air in his own box, presenting the ball to Wimmer.
The former Tottenham centre-back produced a heck of a finish, mind, but manager Rodgers will be pressing home the need to cut out such moments in the games ahead.
Also, he may be slightly concerned about the shape of his side when they lose the ball. Slovan are built to counter and do so effectively, but even still, they got in a couple of times a little too easily, in the first half in particular, when they nicked the ball back.
Those were minor issues on the night, but Rodgers will surely have noted them for future reference.
Celtic bottle electricity and make home advantage count
There can barely be a side in the Champions League that enjoys such a huge home advantage as Celtic do, and the old place certainly didn’t disappoint on the evening.
Ok, it may not ultimately have counted for much in a material sense in the many years when the team on the park haven’t proved up to the level, but when the two are married as they were here, it must provide a huge jag of adrenaline for the Celtic players, and a good old dose of the heebie jeebies for their opponents.
By the time Celtic had their second, the place was absolutely jumping, and the discombobulated visitors were being swallowed up. Danylo Ihnatenko booted Alistair Johnston up in the air to hand them a third from the spot, Engels tucking it away into the same corner he put his penalty against Hearts at the weekend.
Maeda and Idah struck the final blows, but the punch-drunk Slovaks were praying for the bell long before it came.
If they are to progress beyond the league phase, the home matches will be crucial to Celtic’s chances, and they couldn’t have made a better start.
