Celtic 1-4 VfB Stuttgart – Some Home Truths and Definitive Ratings

SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC v STUTTER

“Success is dependent on effort.” – Sophocles.

Jamie Leweling of VfB Stuttgart scores his team’s third goal during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

THE FRIENDLY GHOST – 2/10 – Oh, dear. Bookmark this – Kasper isn’t going down on that left shoulder anytime between now and the World Cup Finals. Nor is he swinging it over to provide the double-handed block their third required; as with the Scottish Cup final, his reliance is on a sturdy right arm but his reaction speed is now too slow with age and wear and tear to be confident in. Exposed, in big games like this, he’s vulnerable. Domestically, he’s good for a few blinding saves when action around him is intermittent. MON has a big call to make. As for the entitled in the stands booing a Celtic keeper in the middle of a big European tie – you need a good old fashioned Jungle slapping. Green Zombies.

AZTECO – 6.5/10 MOTM – The one player providing a consistent level of energy and enthusiasm for the challenge. One lapse late on couldn’t detract from his professional application throughout. He’s becoming the benchmark others need to emulate.

KATIE – 5/10 – Ultimately beaten for stamina, but KT was a passmark, let down by those ahead unable to

find any co-ordination. His experience should make a difference on nights like this, and if there’s any real criticism it’s that he doesn’t take team-mates in a neck-hold and scream into their ears to get the finger out…

OF JUSTICE – 4/10 – Liam didn’t quite know where to look, play or cover; such was the ineptitude around him.

Much of his game was a scrappy and frantic backtracking prayer of a performance, hoping a late leg-in or jump or contact might cause a skewed finish, rather than his usual carefully-measured pickoffs or blocks.

CRUSTY THE CLOWN – 3/10 – The wrong Crusty showed up – back to intermittent hesitancy and mistimed interventions. Couldn’t make up his mind to play man or ball and often ended up between a rock and a hard place, wandering lost in an alternative lonely footballing dimension of misjudgement, a frustrating dreamscape of chasing white numbers on red shirts and never quite getting to them.

Callum McGregor walks out ahead of the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

CALMAC – 4/10 – The skipper looked fine in early bursts either half as we tried to play back into contention. But as I keep pointing out, his own pointing seems to amount to nothing when he’s isolated without properly functioning henchmen around him. If you don’t protect the engine room properly at this level – or enhance it with capable components – you’re going to be outrun and outgunned.

SAINT BERNARDO – 2/10 – Big chance. Big night. And once again Paulo cannot find the class we expect and the industry and input we require. Was that his last? Is the saloon now shut?

Benjamin Nygen celebrates his goal during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

NEGAN – 5/10 – Well.. “This is mince, where th…” ‘Told ye? There he is! Wave! Yaaas!’ “Ya dancer! And there he is again… Damn, saved!” ‘Aaannnnd… Ah, well. See ye briefly Sunday, Negan…’

LORD KATSUMOTO – 3.5/10 – Another early notification was telegraphed – Daizen’s touch was off again. Could he still be that fantastically useful haunting presence along their backline? Well, not if the rest of his team can’t be bothered deploying a decent press. Wasted energy.

CARAVAN – 6/10 – Another rare shining light. Gave a good account in his physical tussle with their 1970s nightclub bouncer, a brute sporting the identikit face of every Russian serial-killer in the Kremlin archives. It would have been enlightening to see if our big lanky rapier could have made anything of some decent service but he was starved by dreadful deliveries and fed mostly off long-ball scraps.

Sebastian Tounekti of Celtic looks dejected during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

TUTANKHAMUN – 2.5/10 – Well, it couldn’t last, apparently. Re-possessed by Mikey J, the in-form Tunisian match-winner reverted to sand-dancing instead of turf-scorching, couldn’t find a cross or shot that could in turn find their penalty box or get within ten yards of the nets. So after an uplifting fortnight he gets his deserved starting jersey, but it’s a frustrating return to futility, capped by a painful nutcracker near the end. Sometime today his baws will drop back out of his chest and we’ll see if he gets the nod for Sunday.

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SUBS –

Yang of Celtic looks dejected during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

YING – N/A – There’s a buzz about the place. Well, it’s a pretty solitary one but encouraging to see the bhoy give it a go, fearless. Others, take note.

HAKUNA HATATE – N/A – Would the introductuion of Reo give us some balance, a touch of quality? Yes, and no. Passing improved across the mid but the complement of personnel yet again failed to impose versus their

numbers.

ITCHYCOO PARK – N/A – Maybe if Keleche was years younger and a yard faster he’d have nicked a late one ahead of their keeper.

Stuttgart celebrations. Celtic v VFB Stuttgart at Celtic Park during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

SCRATCHY – N/A – Welcome, mad one. Could have scored the goal of the night with an audacious thrity yarder, and should have scored the last goal of the night with a perfect set-up for his left peg at the death. But he blazed it high and gone in true existential South American revolutionary-artiste style, as a physical performance-art metaphor for our chances in the tie…

HIGHLAND TOFFEE – N/A – Like Reo, Luke popped in and added a bit of extra quality but not quite enough to invade their comfort zone. Maybe deserves a start, though; as much right as anyone now.

Martin O’Neill in the Celtic dugout for his 1000th match as a manager. Celtic v VFB Stuttgart at Celtic Park during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

FATHER MARTIN AND SAMWISE GANGEE – 4/10 – Mr.1000 take a bow. And then follow up with a good kick or ten of some indolent wasters who let you down so badly on such a landmark night. It’s dire straits when the genial boss can’t get a turn out of a lackadaisical side; do they present a deaf ear or just face more of a psychological wall than we, or he, anticipated when up against reputed class?

In any case, it’s come down to this – a real and final test of his man-management abilities to get this unreliable collective back in any sort of winning groove for the season’s finale. I’d set Fozzy and SOM on them with merciless ferocity for a couple of days before Sunday, see if they react to unhinged madness and mumbling intensity any better than soft coaxing.

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MIBBERY – 2/10 – He doesn’t like Liam, this one. But the way the game went, we never gave him any cause to antagonise or show bias. We probably irritated him mostly by causing cramp in his writing hand with every time he had to scribble ‘GOL’ in his notebook… (that’s dodgy foreign for ‘goal’, smart-chumps, just in case ye thought ye’d spotted a spelling mistkae…).

Kasper Schmeichel of Celtic looks dejected during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

OVERALL – 3/10 – Well, that was comfortable… Said Stuttgart as their training session under the Paradise lights with their terrific away support came to and end. And then their manager thanked Celtic for supplying the dummies in green and white hoops who chased them around for roughly ten minutes to give them the brief impression they were playing an actual European match.

He also reached out in charitable fashion to all the weans from some unknown Glasgow estate who’ll find themselves short of rubber bouncy balls to take to school in the morning and chuck at simping woke supply teachers.

Celtic fans leaving early. Celtic v VFB Stuttgart at Celtic Park during the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

As for Celtic, we might be thinking of turning up for the tie at any point in the next week. Maybe a wee trip to Germany to get rinsed again? But this time with emotion, as they say in the acting world…And our players looked last night like they thought you get a few takes to get this movie right. Nope. You get just one. And you better give it all you’ve got to be heroes or your classy nemesis will…

Too late. Tie over. Movie – working title, ‘Unforgiven’… – over. No third act drama in Europe this season. As tepid and ineffectual a Celtic performance as the European stage has ever seen. Bemusing to witness Celtic Park silenced by the home side’s timid and lightweight approach before the opposition’s quality clamped our tongues. Eventually, of course, Stuttgart took the offerings being presented to them and cleaned house with nary a boot raised in anger.

Celtic supporters singing YNWA ahead of the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

We stood off them, implemented a press weaker than a heterosexual man attempting what the

weeminfolk call ‘ironing’, and ran around cowed, eyes brimming with fear rather than ferocious

with intent. The formula for Euro success at Paradise – tempo, intensity, hunger, desire, aggression, pace, physicality… turned on its head like some carnivore restaurant serving up vegan mush, expecting a couscous and lentil mushroom risotto in lieu of rare fillet and ribs to provide the testosterone and energy to compete with the Reich’s best.

Stuttgart celebrations of the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

A year ago Leipzig had been terrorised and we’d traded head butts with Bayern until we dropped at the death. Stuttgart turned up and walked around in slippers, exchanging pleasantries. It was a crippling result and an embarrassing performance. A Celtic side don’t go down like that, meek and resigned. The final fifteen minutes was one of the poorest closing periods of a big game I’ve ever seen in terms of application, and I was in there through the 80s and 90s, kids… Trust me. There’s been much lesser players put in much more of an effort – and their heart and soul – into doing the jersey justice.

Martin O’Neill arrives at Celtic Park ahead of the UEFA Europa League 2025/26 Knockout Play-off First Leg match between Celtic FC and VfB Stuttgart at Celtic Park on February 19, 2026. (Photo by WM Sport Media/Getty Images)

A shameful shambles. A disgraceful pastiche of a Celtic European night. An insult to the past and to the man attempting to resurrect some of his own bygone glory in a last hurrah. These players have got some damning charges to answer. So they’d better be men enough to shake themselves up and deliver a title defence worthy of the badge they wear.

Go Away Now

Sandman

Celtic in the Thirties by Matt Corr. Click on image to order

SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC v STUTTER

“Success is dependent on effort.” – Sophocles.

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