Celtic centre-back Carl Starfelt has stated that the Hoops won’t change from their regular high-intensity style against Real Betis on Thursday night.
The Bhoys kick off their Europa League campaign with an extremely tough trip to Seville. Celtic will be missing Kyogo Furuhashi, something that will concern supporters after Saturday’s performance against Ross County.
There will be a train of thought then that the wisest thing to do in Seville is to sit back and look to frustrate Betis instead of leaving gaps available to exploit.
But Starfelt has dismissed any notion of that. Instead, he’s stated that the club now has a clear way of playing and it won’t be amended for the trip to Spain.
As quoted by the Daily Record, the Sweden international said: “I feel like we have a very clear way of playing and the coach is very clear in how he wants us to play. So everyone knows what we want to do. We will go and perform our best and see how far it will take us. We know it’s going to be very tough but we also believe in ourselves so we will see.
“It’s important how we want to play this game, what we want to do on the pitch. It’s the first game in the group, it’s obviously a very tough game so we will go and try to win and play our football and see where it takes us.
“He’s a great leader and he knows what he wants and he’s very clear about that. It’s very important the coach is very clear with the way he wants to play so we know what we have to do when we go out onto the pitch. So far he’s been very clear to all the players.”
Celtic not wavering from playing style; Carl Starfelt needs to be switched on in Betis
Postecoglou has always had a belief that setting up in a negative manner just feeds the advantage to the opposition. It’s something many of us will generally agree with.
However, you also wonder how effective a high-pressing game will be if we’re talking about Albian Ajeti being up top. After all, he doesn’t play on the shoulder of the centre-backs in the same manner as Kyogo does. He’s a totally different style of striker, and that’s likely to show.
But Celtic showed their intent to go after AZ Alkmaar in similarly tricky conditions last month. It worked to their advantage too as they nabbed an early opener and put the tie firmly in their favour.
So Postecoglou will view that as a win in terms of his own philosophy. Even if some may question the wiseness of opening up against top La Liga opposition on their own patch, it’s clear the manager is trying to build something here.
As for Starfelt, it only makes his role all the more important. He’s going to have to be switched on from the start against the Spanish outfit. There’ll be nowhere to hide in this one, and it’ll be a fine measure of the summer signing’s progress.
Betis away is our toughest game on paper so far this season. Now it’s time to really see what this Celtic side is made of.
In other news, Watch hilarious Chris Sutton clip as he defends Celtic and Scottish football
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