Celtic loanee Conor Hazard suffered Champions League qualifying disappointment on Tuesday evening after HJK Helsinki were eliminated from the competition.
The 24-year-old shot-stopper is currently spending the season on loan in Finland with the domestic champions, having joined the club in January.
So far, the Northern Ireland internationalist has made 15 appearances for his loan side, keeping five clean sheets, with Helsinki currently sitting 2nd in the Finnish league.
During his first seven months at the club, it hasn’t just been domestic action that Hazard has had to focus on but also Champions League qualifiers with HJK Helsinki.
The Celtic academy graduate will have become well aware of the UCL qualifying route, having been at the club during our failed attempts at the competition in recent years.
With HJK Helsinki, Hazard was looking to achieve something that has only occurred once in the club’s history by qualifying for the Champions League.
It started off well for the Finnish Champions, who elimated Riga on penalties in the first set of qualifiers, and they were set up to take on Czech sike Plzen in the next round.
Unfortunately for Hazard and HJK Helsinki, that was as far as their Champions League journey would take them, with Plzen dominating the tie thanks to a 5-0 home win, which helped them to a 7-1 aggregate victory.
Of course, as we Celtic fans know too well by now, despite being eliminated from the second round, Helsinki still have multiple opportunities for a shot at European football next season.
They will now enter the 3rd round of Europa League qualifying, where they face off against Maribor across the next two weeks.
Should that fail, there is still one more route to group stage football, thanks to the Europa Conference League, which Helsinki were involved in last campaign.
It would be great to see a Celtic loanee involved in European football this coming season, and it could provide Conor Hazard with a good opportunity to impress on the big stage.
We wish the young goalkeeper and his temporary side all the best of luck as their hunt for European Football continues in the next few weeks!
In other news, Yosuke Ideguchi suffers fresh injury set-back ahead of Celtic season opener.
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