More daft headlines as Celtic fans get a glimpse of what Champions League future could look like

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Celtic fans may be starting to get a bit excited about the team’s involvement in the UEFA Champions League next season.

The Hoops will play in the competition’s final 32-team group stage if we claim the three more points required to become Premiership champions.

Ange Postecoglou‘s men have been near faultless in the league this season, and their reward will be entry in to the tournament proper, without the need for a single qualifier.

Our place could be sealed as early as Sunday if we beat Hearts at Tynecastle.

Only a handful of teams have qualified for the group stage so far, with the likes of Manchester City, Napoli, Barcelona and Crvena zvezda all included in that group.

But that hasn’t stopped Swiss Football Data from creating a Seeding Simulator for UEFA competition next season.

When you stick in Celtic’s details, you’re taken to a prediction of what the Champions League group stage could look like.

The program takes current league positions and coefficient seedings in to account to produce the future line-up.

It is just a guide. But the results are interesting. The predicted pots are as follows:

Pot 1: Manchester City, Juventus, Barcelona, Napoli, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Benfica, Feyenoord

Pot 2: Real Madrid, Manchester United, Internazionale, Borussia Dortmund, Atletico Madrid, Porto, Arsenal, Shakhtar Donetsk

Pot 3: RB Salzburg, Dinamo Zagreb, Rangers, Braga, Lazio, Crvena zvezda, Kobenhavn, Young Boys

Pot 4: Real Sociedad, Marseille, Celtic, Galatasaray, Newcastle United, Union Berlin, Freiburg, RC Lens

So a lot can and will change. We must stress that. But, on the face of things, the line-up doesn’t seem quite as daunting as this season.

For example, we held our own against Shakhtar Donetsk over 180 minutes. They could well be a pot 2 side next season.

Of course, the Scottish media have reported on this as well as you would expect.

Football Scotland chose to go down the road of playing us against Rangers, with the daft headline: “Rangers predicted to make Champions League groups and be seeded higher than Celtic.”

A strange way to report on them having to go through qualifiers while we get automatic entry. But each to their own.

Regardless, we’ve got an exciting future ahead of us under Ange Postecoglou.

In other news, Celtic’s stance on the possibility of the Scottish Cup final kick-off time changing has been reported