When Celtic crashed out of Champions League qualification to Cluj in August many felt that it was a real missed opportunity to make the group stage of the competition.
If Neil Lennon’s men had succeeded against the Romanians then they would have set up a Playoff clash against Czech champions Slavia Prague. Many felt that tie was a winnable one. They may have been right, we’ll never know. What we do know is that Slavia are a pretty resolute side – and one we would have had our work cut out against.
Jindrich Trpisovsky’s outfit may only have garnered two points from their opening four group fixtures but, in a group containing Inter Milan, Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona, that’s no mean feat.
Their goalless draw in the Nou Camp on Tuesday evening showed that they are a pretty well-equipped European side. Slavia only lost to an own goal in the preceding fixture to the Catalan giants while they were two minutes from coming away from the San Siro with a 1-0 win – eventually having to settle for a point.
Celtic will have to mix it with the likes of Slavia
Given that they were unseeded in the final round of Champions League qualifying, it does paint a very bleak picture for Celtic’s future at the top table of European football.
Slavia are the only of the four teams to qualify from the ‘Champions League’ that are bottom of their group. Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb and Crvena Zvezda are all in with a good chance of securing European football after Christmas. All three have won a group stage match already.
While Celtic would have avoided most of those sides in this season’s qualifying, it does show that the calibre of national champions is improving. We are no longer the big fish in that small pond. The days of beating Helsingborgs, Shakhter Karagandy and Astana to qualify are long gone.
What faces us is a properly tough future. A future where we’ll have to mix it with the likes of Slavia just to get a shot at the continent’s very elite teams.
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