Borussia Dortmund’s Jamie Gittens shares what surprised him about Celtic’s Signal Iduna Park performance

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Borussia Dortmund star, Jamie Gittens, has shared what surprised him about Celtic’s Champions League performance in Germany last night.

Brendan Rodgers’ side was taught an embarrassing footballing lesson by the Bundesliga club after a game that started so promisingly.

Despite falling behind to an early penalty, Daizen Maeda equalised for Celtic just over 90 seconds later but the joy was short-lived as Dortmund exposed the Hoops’ high press for the second time in the opening stages of the game.

In truth, Dortmund punished almost every single mistake Celtic made and the result could have been a lot worse.

So when Dortmund’s Jamie Gitten shares what surprised him about Celtic’s performance in Germany, the reply won’t surprise the Hoops fans.

Gittens surprised by Celtic’s ‘high press’

Gitten was a thorn in Celtic’s side and won Dortmund their first penalty of the game after he surged in behind the Hoops defence only to be brought down by Kasper Schmeichel.

And looking back on the match, the young winger said he was surprised at how Celtic approached the game against his team.

Gittens told TNT Sports, “It was a very enjoyable game. They played really intense to defend us with a high press but after the first two goals went in it was quite easy to go through them in a way. So yeah, it was a good game today.

“They scored right after us so there was a bit of pressure on us to score again. So we’ve done that. And we won the game.

On being asked if he was surprised about how Celtic set up against his team, Gittens continued, “Yeah, they wanted to high press us in a way, we did a good job in the first 5-10 minutes but after this, we played better football, we started popping around in the back end into pockets and spaces and in turn we got the goals.”

Celtic lessons need to be learned

All the chat today is about how Brendan Rodgers has told the media that Celtic won’t change their approach to the Champions League fixtures regardless of the opponent.

That is a view that has been challenged by many pundits like Owen Hargreaves who has urged the Celtic boss to rethink his strategy ahead of the next away fixture to Atalanta.

And whilst the finger of blame seems to be getting pointed at Brendan Rodgers, the Celtic fans just want to see an improvement in the team’s performance in time for the visit to Italy because another result like last night will simply not be tolerated.