Callum McGregor has dismissed the tiring narrative over the unusual kickoff time between Celtic and Ferencvaros tomorrow at Parkhead.
The Hoops will face off against the Hungarian side in our third Europa League group stage encounter. However, due to COP 26, the game is having to be played tomorrow at a rare time of 3:30pm. Not quite the 8pm slot we normally expect for home European matches.
But it’s something that’s been given far too much concentration around Scotland in recent days. Ange Postecoglou was asked about it more than once during his presser today [Celtic TV], with too many wondering what kind of effect it will have on our performance level.
Thankfully, McGregor was there to put an end to any speculation as he stated it makes little difference to the players involved.
Speaking via Celtic TV, the Parkhead captain said: “Not so much (on whether it makes a difference). Obviously, in terms of it being a European game, it’s normally at night. There’s a slightly different time in terms of the kickoff time, but we’ve been in the game a long time now to understand that we know what the fixture is, we know what the fixture is, we know what the game is. It just becomes another matchday for us.
“So the preparation has been good in terms of recovering well from the weekend. The boys have trained well in training over the last 2 days and the squad’s looking good. So when we turn up at the game tomorrow it just becomes another matchday and the situation around that stays the same.
“That’s what the hope is. It’s a little bit different in terms of people trying to get to the stadium. So we appreciate everyone who’s made the effort to get there, and we hope for a big atmosphere again. It doesn’t matter the kickoff time. We’re at home in a European tie and we need to bring that energy for the crowd to feed off, and I’m sure they will.”
Kickoff time shouldn’t be prepped as a potential excuse for Celtic against Ferencvaros
It’s frustrating to see this continuously being pushed as some sort of potentially decisive factor in the game. You would think the players had never experienced a mid-afternoon kickoff before.
It’s not as if the Celtic players are being woken up at 3am for a 3:30am kickoff against an energy-brimmed Ferencvaros. The truth is it should make no difference to how we perform on the day.
Celtic prepare every Saturday for fixtures at similar times of the day. They’ll have a set way of preparing for that. And that’s something we should see tomorrow.
Using the kickoff time as some sort of pre-prepared excuse makes no real sense. It’s the same for Ferencvaros, they won’t be used to travelling for away fixtures at this time of day.
Sure, it may have some form of impact on the crowd in attendance. That’s a fair point to put forward. But it’s not as if we’re going to be playing at an empty Celtic Park. We know from experience just how loud it can be even with 20k fans missing.
So it’s time to put to bed any idea the kickoff time could be a factor in our performance level tomorrow. We really should be rising above that kind of nonsense, just as McGregor did here.
In other news, Celtic manager explains why he’ll keep using Rogic and Turnbull in the same XI
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
