For Brendan Rodgers, a year ago it wasn’t about ankle-length robes, traditional Arab headdress and goofing around with a ceremonial rifle for the cameras in Saudi Arabia. Things felt more serious then. He had just helped deliver a result which looks more and more like the high watermark for Celtic in Europe now. It was a night which invited the club to take a great leap forward. Instead, to their supporters’ dismay and anger, all they have done is shrink and retreat.
Another European campaign is about to end in Germany just as last year’s did, but the circumstances and the mood could not feel more difficult. Twelve months ago Celtic did not beat Bayern Munich on the night nor knock them out in the tie, but they came close to both. They were seconds from a second leg victory over 90 minutes which would have taken their last 16 play-off to extra time in Germany. A stoppage time equaliser undid them but Celtic left with their heads held high. Here it was, credibility and respectability in Europe, with the prospect of more to come. Rodgers talked about doing it all again consistently and there being “no reason why you can’t then move on to a last 16 or a quarter-final.” They were at a crossroads.
Everyone knows what came next. Having already sold Kyogo Furuhashi in January they cashed in their chips on Nicolas Kühn and developed some sort of paralysis when it came to recruitment and investment in the summer and January windows. Last season they defeated RB Leipzig 3-1, drew away to Atalanta, finished level on points with Juventus and above Manchester City in the league phase. Then they ran Bayern close.
Now they will go out in Stuttgart because they are a lost cause 4-1 down from the home leg of the knockout phase play-off and so the obituaries can be written on another European effort. A lamentable one, really. From Bayern Munich last February to Kairat Almaty in August and the catastrophe of Champions League elimination to a club ranked 315th in Europe by Uefa. To the board’s army of detractors that was the ultimate told-you-so result. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Celtic’s back four at the end of the night — and the end of the road — in deepest, darkest Kazakhstan included Dane Murray, 18-year-old Colby Donovan and Liam Scales at left back. Kairat duly joined the long list of modestly-financed clubs to have knocked Celtic out of the Champions League qualifiers in recent years: Maribor, Malmo, AEK Athens, Cluj, Ferencvaros, Midtjylland, Kairat. Tens and tens of millions of pounds up in smoke.
Parachuting into the Europa League brought little relief. They will go no further in Europe’s second tier than they did in the Champions League last season, having finished in exactly the same position in the league phase — 21st looks a whole lot less impressive in this competition — as they did 11 months ago. Rodgers said he felt “empty” after the summer window and by the time he compared managing Celtic to having the keys to a Honda Civic and being asked to drive it like a Ferrari, controlling shareholder Dermot Desmond was fed up with him and Rodgers quit. Wilfried Nancy’s eight-game reign was a bin fire and Martin O’Neill was left holding the baby. Across 11 games in Europe this season Celtic have had as many wins as managers.
This is well-trodden ground when it comes to analysing Celtic. Supporters long for credibility and ambition to match their own financial and emotional input. They resent a stale and unchanging ownership and a business model ideologically committed to prudence and stockpiling money for “rainy day” seasons they sometimes unwittingly create. Fans look at relentless overachievers Bodo/Glimt and ask, not unreasonably, why Celtic fail to aspire and achieve like the little Norwegians with a fraction of the resources? Bodo/Glimt have won more knockout ties in Europe in the last two days then Celtic have in 21 years.
There is no reason to believe anything fundamental is going to change at Celtic in terms of approach or outcome. At the infamous recent AGM Desmond’s son, Ross, delivered a censorious lecture about “the enormous change in the financial landscape of football” since Celtic reached the 2003 Uefa Cup final. Clubs do still punch above their financial weight and Celtic should aspire to that, he said, talking to the room but not reading it, before immediately indicating that no manager should expect to be indulged with truly substantial investment: “If you swing and miss, you risk the very stability of the club and that would be profoundly irresponsible.”
There is the prospect of a trophyless campaign and they have no manager for next season. At a meeting with the Celtic Fans Collective protest group, it was said that the recruitment process for the next manager was under review and that Celtic had a nominations committee — including Dermot Desmond and unpopular CEO Michael Nicholson — which would interview candidates and identify the preferred choice, the same as always. The same as picked Nancy last time.
As it stands Celtic are third in the Premiership and not even in a position to secure a place in next season’s Champions League qualifiers. Third place, where they currently sit, will secure access only to the second qualifying round of the Conference League. Kicking on from Bayern? Building on it? Aspiring to Rodgers’ vision of the last 16 and even the quarter-finals? Celtic playing in the Conference League with six games to negotiate before the league phase, and fixtures as early as July 23 and 30, would be a brutal demonstration of failure and decline.
With a mediocre squad including six players on loans and 39-year-old first choice goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel out of contract in the summer, and the prospect of European qualifiers as early as July, there are also enormous questions about Celtic’s planning for next season. A main one being, who on earth is in charge of it? The much and rightly-maligned head of football operations, Paul Tisdale, has yet to be replaced and the January recruitment was driven by O’Neill and Shaun Maloney.
In August Rodgers said there was “absolutely no doubt” Celtic had to look at the timing of their signings to avoid the panicky, deadline day stampede which has become so familiar. He talked about the club having to learn from its mistakes because, if it did not, “the cycle will just continue”.
For a year they have circled the drain in Europe. O’Neill sings from the Desmond songbook now, echoing the board’s laments about financial inequality, but he was once the ambitious young boss warning of where Celtic were headed. If their revenues did not improve, he said in 2003, “we may have to get used to life in the slow lane”. A couple of decades later a long series of bad decisions and poor recruitment amount to the handbrake being pulled.
Stuttgart (4) v Celtic (1)
Europa League knockout phase play-off second leg
Thursday 5.45pm
TV TNT Sports 2