What Joe Hart told Josip Juranovic after his class Celtic Panenka

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Josip Juranovic has lifted the lid on the message he received from Celtic goalkeeper Joe Hart after his audacious Panenka away to Bayer Leverkusen.

Juranovic wowed everyone with his nerves of steel in Germany last week. Despite Celtic being 1-0 down and needing a point to stay in the group, Juranovic showed incredible composure to dink Lukas Hradecky in the Leverkusen goal when we won a spot-kick.

Unfortunately, Celtic came out on the end of a 3-2 defeat. Typical of the Hoops away from home in Europe really. But the Panenka was still a major talking point post-match with fans taking real pride in the level of quality shown by Josip when under pressure.

And a week on as we build-up to tonight’s game against Hearts, the Croatian revealed the simple Hart reaction to his big moment and display.

As quoted by the Scottish Sun, Juranovic said: “That’s just a penalty, it’s nothing special. I decided before the whistle what I would do, take a Panenka penalty.

“I was speaking with Joe Hart maybe two weeks before the game over dinner and told him I would do it next time I had the chance. The opportunity came up in Germany and I took it. Joe was like, ‘You came up with a big performance’.”

Josip Juranovic showing his ability to mix his Celtic penalties up

In fairness to Josip, you have to admire his ability to mix up his spot-kicks. If you take a look at what he’s produced from his three penalties so far, they’ve all been different kinds of efforts.

His first against Real Betis was hammered into the bottom right-hand corner. He then went to the opposite side in a Premiership match against St Johnstone. Fast forward to Leverkusen and he was in fine form with a Panenka. 3 totally different styles of penalty kicks.

One of the fears you always have with spot-kick takers that go the same way is that the goalkeepers will eventually read them easily enough. Juranovic appears to have that ability to change up how he approaches penalties. That’s going to be extremely important as the season rolls on.

We saw how costly it was not having Josip on pens in the 0-0 home draw against Livingston. It’s clear how valuable an asset he is when it comes to that particular factor.

Celtic still have some decent penalty takers outside of Josip too. We know how efficient Callum McGregor can be from the spot, whilst Giakoumakis had a superb record in the Netherlands from 12 yards before his summer arrival.

Now if only we could get Juranovic playing in his right position.

In other news, Report: Important update on Dundee Utd vs Celtic; what Tannadice chiefs expect to happen