The Offical Glasgow Celtic thread

[illdecide]

Celtic v Zenit St Petersburg

[general_lee]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42292297

interesting read

Champions league is shite to be honest. As is football in general. The most powerful clubs nowadays are clubs like City and PSG who have no tradition. Players just follow the money. The romance is long gone. Clubs like Celtic are an afterthought, even though they epitomise, or should epitomise, what European football is all about.

Man City have a great tradition .  A great old club with a really good local support base .   An Irishman following a Scottish club complaining about money ruining European football .  People need to get a grip .  This is a professional globalised sport , is is showbiz . 

Yeah great tradition in Europe alright. They've always been stalwarts on the European stage

Celtic get Zenit. Another tough draw

[tonto1888]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42292297

interesting read

Champions league is shite to be honest. As is football in general. The most powerful clubs nowadays are clubs like City and PSG who have no tradition. Players just follow the money. The romance is long gone. Clubs like Celtic are an afterthought, even though they epitomise, or should epitomise, what European football is all about.

Man City have a great tradition .  A great old club with a really good local support base .   An Irishman following a Scottish club complaining about money ruining European football .  People need to get a grip .  This is a professional globalised sport , is is showbiz . 

Yeah great tradition in Europe alright. They've always been stalwarts on the European stage

Celtic get Zenit. Another tough draw

And one which we wont progress from sadly

[illdecide]

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers says the Russian winter break could work in his side's favour when they face Zenit St Petersburg in the Europa League.

Rodgers' men have been drawn to face Roberto Mancini's side in February.

The Russian season closes down this month and Zenit will not play a competitive match in the period before their last-32 tie.

Rodgers says "it doesn't make it the easiest" having to play big matches after long periods of inactivity.

But he says "it works both ways" as Celtic have the same issue in the summer when they play Champions League qualifying matches.

The Scottish champions were in the unseeded pot for the first of the tournament's knockout rounds.

They finished third in their Champions League group, following last week's home defeat by Anderlecht, to drop into Europe's second-tier competition.

Celtic host Zenit on 15 February and travel to St Petersburg on 22 February.

Roberto Mancini
Italian Mancini was previously boss of Manchester City
Following a third-place finish last season, Zenit are currently fourth in Russia's Premier League, behind Krasnodar, Spartak Moscow and Lokomotiv Moscow.

They play their last match on Monday (11 December), against Akhmat Grozny, before almost a three-month winter break, with league fixtures not resuming until 4 March.

Zenit, who beat Rangers in the 2008 final to win the Uefa Cup, and went on to win the Uefa Super Cup that year, have won the Russian title five times.

They have former Chelsea defenders Branislav Ivanovic and Yuri Zhirkov in their squad, as well as a host of Russian internationals, including Viktor Fayzulin and Igor Smolnikov, and Italy international Domenico Criscito.

Zenit dominated Europa League Group L on their way to the knockout stage. The Russians finished top of the pool on 16 points after five wins and one draw, with Real Sociedad four points adrift in second. Rosenborg and FK Vardar finished third and fourth.

Zenit also finished the group stage campaign as the competition's top scorers with 17 from their six matches - they conceded just five goals.

[ashman]

The Celtic v Zenit tie will be close .  Dundalk gave them plenty of it last year .

[Main Street]

Anderlecht beat them 2 nil in the first home leg at the same stage in last year's EL (round of32). 
Zenit were winning 3 nil in the 2nd leg until Anderlecht equalised the tie with a last minute goal and won through to the next round.

[illdecide]

The 3 month lay-off will def go in Celtic's favour there, i agree they're a decent team but are not the team they were 2-3 years ago. They're sitting in 4th place in league so thats a usually a good indication of their season. A winnable game for Celtic but a toughie too

[Main Street]

I suppose their performance has dropped in the last couple of years, since they have had to lay off the drugs due to all the attentive scrutiny from the noble sportsmanly Brits.

[Avondhu star]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42292297

interesting read

Champions league is shite to be honest. As is football in general. The most powerful clubs nowadays are clubs like City and PSG who have no tradition. Players just follow the money. The romance is long gone. Clubs like Celtic are an afterthought, even though they epitomise, or should epitomise, what European football is all about.

Man City have a great tradition .  A great old club with a really good local support base .   An Irishman following a Scottish club complaining about money ruining European football .  People need to get a grip .  This is a professional globalised sport , is is showbiz . 

Yeah great tradition in Europe alright. They've always been stalwarts on the European stage

Celtic get Zenit. Another tough draw

And one which we wont progress from sadly

At least they are in Europe after Christmas. It's some progress. They will need to put in a very good first leg to get through. Meanwhile south of the border it looks like they will be presenting the Premiership trophy to Manchester City at the end of December.

[illdecide]

What it means to be a Celtic fan...

I AM A CELTIC FAN. I WILL NOT HIDE.
Date: 11th December 2017 at 4:11pm
Written by: David Campbell

I am 40, next year.

I have no idea what day I started being a Celtic fan/supporter because it so ingrained in my life. It's just me. Do I have a season ticket right now? No. My work commitments make it financially questionable. Now there may be some who would say "pay your money anyway" but I know Celtic and the majority of our fans would say, "No, don't do that." There are other ways to be a fan/supporter. I have had season tickets, more than once. I remember my dad talking to me about Celtic, sober..and not sober, teaching me about the club. My uncles, aunts and other friends and family all did the same. We are products of our environment. My environment was Celtic. And all those people shared with me their experiences and stories about the club. There was one characteristic of those people, of those stories; they were from a time when "being Celtic" sometimes meant not showing it. Prejudice was everywhere.

Some people think times have changed. Not that much they haven't. Still "society" tells us we shouldn't wave our flags. We shouldn't shout about who we are. A lot of people were happy with us in the back of the bus. They wish we'd stayed there. When Neil Lennon was manager of Celtic, the abuse he received verbally, digitally and physically was despicable, vile, horrendous. Many in our society said he "brought it upon himself." How? By being openly, boldly, unashamedly Celtic. And incredibly, the people who taught me about Celtic, while they felt that that it was horrible, were so set in their ways and the mindset of days gone by that some of them actually questioned Neil Lennon for being so open about Celtic and his background.

I hated this and I felt it was a symptomatic of being brought up in a time and world were being anything but a Protestant fan of the club from Ibrox was to be hidden, if you admitted you were Catholic and/or Celtic (we accept they are not mutually exclusive) then you were restricted in jobs, where you lived ... any number of doors were closed to you. This is part of the issue we have at the moment with our domestic dominance; if you take my age group as the median – 40 – on the younger side are a generations that revels in our current glory, in the success, and they are spoiled cos they haven't seen the bad days. On the other side are those who lived with every moment of them, but come from a generation where you took the good and the bad the same way; largely in silence, if you wanted to "fit in". They grew up in a country that hated us, in a culture that suffocated us, in a world that thought of us as second class. And some of them can't shake it.

The younger generation treats every defeat like a disaster. Those from the older group sometimes feel they need to find a way of criticising Celtic, and cal well remember the names they were called whenever they stood tall and spoke of their love for the club. I am all of them and neither of them. I am Celtic and I am goddamned proud of it. I will not sit at the back of the bus, but nor will I forget where we come from. The football history, the social history.

We have fought and earned everything we have.

[tonto1888]

That's an excellent piece, enjoyed reading it

[tonto1888]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42292297

interesting read

Champions league is shite to be honest. As is football in general. The most powerful clubs nowadays are clubs like City and PSG who have no tradition. Players just follow the money. The romance is long gone. Clubs like Celtic are an afterthought, even though they epitomise, or should epitomise, what European football is all about.

Man City have a great tradition .  A great old club with a really good local support base .   An Irishman following a Scottish club complaining about money ruining European football .  People need to get a grip .  This is a professional globalised sport , is is showbiz . 

Yeah great tradition in Europe alright. They've always been stalwarts on the European stage

Celtic get Zenit. Another tough draw

And one which we wont progress from sadly

At least they are in Europe after Christmas. It's some progress. They will need to put in a very good first leg to get through. Meanwhile south of the border it looks like they will be presenting the Premiership trophy to Manchester City at the end of December.

this is true and theres quite a bit of time between now and the game so who nows what shape we will be in

[Aaron Boone]

Celtic 3-0 down to Hearts. Not playing well the last month.

[MoChara]

Celtic 3-0 down to Hearts. Not playing well the last month.

We've been limping along this past while domestically if it wasn't hearts it would've been someone else, and at least it wasn't rangers

[longballin]

Bit of a tanking but had to end some time.