Celtic captain Scott Brown has opened up on Brendan Rodgers’ biggest ever embarrassment as Hoops manager.
The Northern Irishman done it all at Parkhead. He won back-to-back domestic trebles and twice qualified us for the Champions League group stages. He even managed the side to an iconic invincible season, where Celtic drew just four domestic games in all competitions with no defeats.
Yet we weren’t quite invincible in Rodgers’ first competitive match in charge. Indeed, Celtic secured their most embarrassing result ever when they lost to Gibraltar champions Lincoln Red Imps away from home. Celtic eventually overturned the tie at Parkhead with a 3-0 success, but the bruising of the loss in Gibraltar stung for a while.
Brown hadn’t really opened up on what happened behind the scenes with that one. But speaking to Football Daily on Youtube, Brown finally gave supporters an insight of what happened that night.
“I think that game it was more experimental. The manager probably didn’t know his best team at the time, didn’t know who he was going to play. It was 35 degrees. The pitch was harder than this (wooden floor).
“Going over to Gibraltar, nobody is thinking we’re ever going to get beat there. We turn up, we did 17 days in Austria for pre-season so we should be in good condition. We went straight over to Gibraltar and stayed in the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in.
“They couldn’t cook chicken – the chef got sacked. We’re all sitting there going ‘what is happening here?’ So none of the lads had ate anything for pre-match. Not that that’s an excuse, we should’ve still been beating them without eating. We turned up to the game and the pitch was horrendous.”
A game that left its scar on us
It was ironic that Celtic went on to become the force they did after this result. It’s almost as if it spurred us on to success, but as for the day itself, it was a result that will forever have a scar on the club.
It’s interesting to see how disastrous the preparation was, however. It sounds as though straight from the moment the squad reached Gibraltar that it was the trip from hell. If anything, the result probably typified the entire trip.
It just goes to show the importance of getting everything right in terms of preparation. Celtic had been at their pre-season training camp in Austria for almost three weeks. Yet their poor experience in Gibraltar helped make us suffer perhaps the worst result in our history.
Rodgers went on to do remarkably well in making sure he wasn’t remembered for that woeful night. Despite his controversial departure, he still led this club to incredible success after the Red Imps match. Whilst that has been tainted, the trophies are still in our locker.
But thank goodness we were able to knock the Gibraltar outfit out at Celtic Park. God knows what the reaction would’ve been had we not…
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