Celtic do not even need to be in the same tournament as Bodo/Glimt for the Norwegians to loom as a persistent pain in the neck. In their histories the clubs have met only in the last 32 of the 2022 Conference League — Bodo/Glimt won home and away and 5-1 on aggregate — yet these perennial overachievers are constantly presented as Exhibit A by those angered about Celtic’s lamentable lack of impact and ambition in Europe.
When Martin O’Neill highlighted the financial discrepancy between Celtic and clubs from the big five leagues, as he did when they were trounced by Stuttgart on Thursday, Bodo/Glimt were the elephant in the room. An elephant improbably based in the Arctic Circle, maybe, but boy do they make their presence felt.
The wait for Celtic’s first win in a European knockout tie will continue into a 23rd year. They will be eliminated from the Europa League by Stuttgart next Thursday and the only remaining objective is damage limitation and a morsel of respectability in Germany after losing 4-1 at Parkhead. Last month Stuttgart returned to the top 20 in the Deloitte Football Money League, the annual publication showing the clubs with the highest revenues in world football. They were included for the first time in nine years after their matchday revenue alone rose by 90 per cent on the back of finishing second in the Bundesliga in 2024 and playing in the Champions League proper.
“The money has changed the game,” said O’Neill. “There’s not the money in the SPFL. No team here can buy a player for £30m. We can’t do it, Rangers can’t do it, Hearts can’t do it, none of the sides can do that. It doesn’t mean that you can’t compete, it doesn’t mean that. You’d like to be going deep into European competitions just to feel as if ‘yeah, this is what it’s all about’. Which it is.”
Stuttgart’s annual revenue is around £260m and their wage bill £110m, compared to Celtic’s figures of £143m and £74m respectively. That cannot be hidden behind as an insurmountable gulf. Celtic ran Bayern Munich far closer a year ago. Consider Bodo/Glimt, from a town with a population of 55,000 on the remote north-west coast. Bodo/Glimt’s European results should embarrass Celtic, whose beleaguered and staid board should be fed up hearing about them.
Last season they reached the Europa League semi-finals. In this season’s Champions League they beat Manchester City and Atletico Madrid and drew with Tottenham Hotspur and Borussia Dortmund. In the play-off for the last 16 on Wednesday, the day before Celtic were shredded by Stuttgart, they beat Inter Milan 3-1. Celtic would have ticker-tape parades for results like that. All on reported Bodo/Glimt revenues of around £30m and a wage bill of £10m. Their stadium can hold fewer than 9,000 fans. Their success is multi-layered but they have stability, identity, boardroom energy and vision, committed and sharp recruitment based around domestic talent, and an intensely-focused training regime and management, under long-serving coach Kjetil Knutsen, which is all levels above Celtic. The results prove that.
Around the Scottish game, the irony is not lost when any Celtic manager talks of financial disparities and the difficulty of trying to compete in Europe, when Celtic themselves are understandably content to hold equally towering advantages over every SPFL opponent except Rangers. It would be absurd to suggest football is not shaped and structured almost entirely on financial power, but Bodo/Glimt show what professionalism and ambition can achieve. It can break the lines. The opposite is also true. A richer, stagnant club with unimpressive operators making poor decisions will be toppled. Celtic lost the Premier Sports Cup final to St Mirren.
Celtic have none of the unity enjoyed by little Bodo/Glimt. O’Neill was angered by fans throwing dozens of small balls onto the pitch seconds after kick-off against Stuttgart in a protest against the board and its ban on the Green Brigade ultras. Celtic are back at Parkhead on Sunday, against Hibernian, when there is the prospect of further protests of some sort. Interim chairman Brian Wilson talked with some fan representatives on a Zoom call but the complaints — they want CEO Michael Nicholson replaced and other boardroom changes, fan media access restored and the Green Brigade allowed back — are unresolved.
“I know that we’re trying,” said O’Neill, aligning himself with the board. “Brian Wilson has got the club at heart. He’s a really good speaker, he’s a fair-minded man at the end of it all. We thought that we might have been making a bit of progress. All I’m saying is that a disruption really doesn’t help. I don’t think it does anybody any good. I cannot stop people shouting whatever they want to shout at the end of the day. But disrupting the game doesn’t help psychologically or in any other aspect.”
Stuttgart’s comfortable win demoralised Celtic and O’Neill must lift them for Hibs. They could be nine points behind leaders Hearts by kick-off, albeit with two games in hand. Hearts host Falkirk on Saturday; on Sunday it is Celtic-Hibs and Livingston-Rangers, both at 3pm.
“I don’t think it will be a massive worry,” said O’Neill about his players’ morale. “I don’t think it will be a problem for us, getting up for the game. The focus has got to be on that. We want to try and compete in European matches but really, now, this game is very, very important for us.”
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain may start for the first time after appearing as a substitute against Livingston and Kilmarnock. He was signed too late to play in the Europa League tie. “He’s had a week of training now,” said O’Neill of the 32-year-old marquee arrival who had previously not played since May. “That will help him immensely. He’s a good player so I think he’s got every chance of coming into this side on Sunday. He’s also a player that can lift these guys as well, in terms of his performance.”
But O’Neill would not be drawn further on Kasper Schmeichel, who was culpable for two of Stuttgart’s goals and was booed by Celtic fans late in the game. “This is for another day,” he said.