Callum McGregor’s Celtic dressing room chat that inspired historic Slovan Bratislava win

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Away from Celtic’s League Cup win over Falkirk for a moment, the Champions League chat continues for the fans.

Celtic’s historic 5-1 win over Slovan Bratislava created countless headlines as pundits and former players laud Brendan Rodgers’ team for their performance.

The win ended Celtic’s winless run in the opening group stage fixture and got their current Champions League campaign off to a great start.

And whilst many Celtic supporters would have expected their team to win the game, none would have predicted it would have been done with such a huge margin.

So what inspired such a performance? Captain, Callum McGregor, shares what he told the Celtic team before they took to the pitch.

McGregor told Celtic teammates to ‘show what we can do’

McGregor is famed for his rousing speeches in The Huddle prior to kick-off. The Celtic captain can get quite animated and it’s great to see his passion.

But it was in the Celtic Park changing rooms that McGregor delivered a strong message to his teammates.

McGregor told the Daily Record [print edition page 48], “Hopefully that win has given everyone belief. There were expectations on us to win the game coming in.

“But I said that to the players – we are expected to win so let’s go and show what we can do. The performance level was outstanding.

“Everything feels good but can we continue that? We have a couple of tough away games but there’s no reason why we can’t try to play the same way and see what we can get from the games.

“Let’s not be blase and say we’ll go and win every game – it’s not going to be as easy as that. But when you start so well and the performance was so positive, everyone wants to build on that.”

Celtic’s next Champions League challenges

Celtic now have two tough away fixtures coming up in October as they visit Borussia Dortmund on the 1st of October and then Atalanta on the 23rd.

Dortmund are not having the best time of it domestically after succumbing to a 5-1 defeat to VfB Stuttgart at the weekend.

As for Atalanta, their 3-2 home defeat to Como last night also gives Celtic hope that the current Europa League holders are not infallible.

So whilst both fixtures present a challenge for Celtic, Stuttgart and Como have proven that a result against two of the best teams in Europe is more than achievable.