There’s a sense amongst the Celtic support that, with a few additions in key areas, we could be a force to be reckoned with in Europe.
Wednesday night’s defeat to Lazio was about as gutting as they come. Genuinely, I’m trying to think of any similarly heartbreaking climaxes to European matches in recent years. The only one that comes close was Copenhagen in 2020.
What made last night’s defeat the more gutting was the fact that the team actually played pretty well. We were the better side for vast swathes of the match and should really have taken three points, never mind one.
With that considered, it’s pretty hard to know exactly how to feel. I’ll be honest in saying that I’m struggling to feel a great deal of positivity after yet another defeat at the very top level. I don’t care much for hard luck stories.
Yet, this Celtic team did give us some cause for hope that they can compete with, and maybe even beat, sides from the continent’s top leagues. That much was made clear on Wednesday.
One obvious way to reach that point, other than the current crop learning from the experience, is for us to improve in key areas. Goalkeeper and left-back are two positions where we have perhaps been caught in our opening two matches. The left wing may be another topic of debate.
Our two players who played there last night — Hyunjun Yang and Luis Palma — are both in the infancy of their Celtic careers. Palma has only featured in four matches so far while Yang has managed nine.
The former looks more likely to become a mainstay at this stage, with Yang perhaps taking a little more time to produce big moments. Palma has already netted for the club and took his disallowed goal well against Lazio. Yet, there is an unavoidable feeling that we have regressed in that area since Jota left the club.
The Portuguese attacker was a talisman for us, pretty much from the minute he arrived in the door. He was our star player in his first European clash against Real Betis. During that campaign, he also netted against Ferencvaros and Bayer Leverkusen and set up other goals.
Palma could well become that player in time. So could Yang. But the bigger issue right now is that we don’t have a Jota-level player on the left. If we had that last night from the start, we may well have secured a big win.
The former Benfica man would have lapped that game up. Alas, he is over in Saudi Arabia not getting game time and we are left pondering what might have been, in more ways than one.
Palma hasn’t exactly made a bad start to life in Scotland. But the jury is out for me on whether he can be the kind of talisman Jota was for us.
In other news, Brendan Rodgers reacts to the cruelest of nights for Celtic in the Champions League
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