Those Celtic critics will be saying, ‘I told you so’ following the club’s Champions League exit on Tuesday night.
It’s not just the fact that Celtic were beaten on penalties by Kairat Almaty, it’s the manner in which it happened, and the noise around it all.
For weeks and weeks now, certain sections of the fanbase have been having a go at the Celtic board for not properly backing Brendan Rodgers during the 2025 summer transfer window.
Yet, the champions of Scotland now have to prepare for Europa League football after two dire performances against Kairat, including a shocking second-leg display in Kazakhstan, with Martin O’Neill making sure he wasn’t mincing his words post-match.
Martin O’Neill reacts as Celtic suffer defeat to Kairat Almaty
It wasn’t so long ago that the Celtic Park faithful, the players and the manager were taking a lot of positives from a progressive 2024/25 Champions League campaign, including the performance in Munich against Bayern.
That was brought up by O’Neill when discussing Celtic’s Champions League exit on Amazon Prime (26/08/25), and how the club was supposed to kick on from there.
Yet, as bluntly as the legendary Irishman put it, look in the mirror because it’s obvious who is to blame here.
“Celtic, it’s their own fault,” said O’Neill. “They are out of a competition they should be in. They haven’t done enough over the two games.
“There have been little moments. We had the Maeda moment there (one-v-one chance), and that’s absolutely right. He should score the goal.
“But there has never been a sustained six or seven minutes where they put the opposition under that sort of pressure where you thought that they were going to capitulate. It just never happened, not just tonight, but in the previous game.
“I was always concerned about these sorts of matches, and games that you know in November time that you would take quite easily, so that was a worry for a start.
“Then you have everything else on top of that. You have got the expectation. We actually witnessed this. It wasn’t just disappointment about losing to Bayern Munich (last season). It was actually adulation for the team for what they had done.
“So, the first thing you are thinking about is, ‘can we emulate?’ ‘If we can emulate it, can we surpass it?’ And that’s what Celtic football club is built on.
“At the start of the programme, you showed 1967, the first British team to win the European Cup. When I stepped into Celtic, not that I expected to win the European Cup, but that’s what you aspire to.”
Which teams are in the 2025/26 Europa League?
That defeat will still be raw for the Celtic supporters, but attention has to focus on the Europa League, and playing on Thursday nights.
As of this moment, 18 teams are banked in for the main phase of the 2025/26 Europa League. The final set of qualifiers will conclude on Thursday, and the winners from that will make up the rest of the teams in Europe’s second-tier tournament.
There are some familiar faces Celtic could face, as well as a couple of all-British ties. Here are some selected teams:
- Aston Villa
- Nottingham Forest
- Feyenoord
- AS Roma
- Porto
- LOSC Lille
- Olympique Lyon
- Real Betis
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