Ange Postecoglou admits his biggest driver is to make a Champions League impact with Celtic.
The Parkhead boss has confessed it’s a major motivation to get his club back into the elite of the European game.
Postecoglou can clinch automatic entry to next season’s group stages by winning the Premiership title.
Second spot will also secure a place in the qualifiers for the continent’s premier tournament and the Aussie says he’s got deep desire to get his club competing again with the cream.
Postecoglou uses Celtic’s history as inspiration and said: “[This club] won a European Cup. How many clubs can say that?
“It’s one of those clubs that are in rarefied sort of territory and, when you do that, then that sets a standard that you need to try and uphold.
“For me, my goal is to get this football club to be playing Champions League and competing.
“There’s some massive clubs, but you also look at some other clubs that do well in the Champions League and you think, well, we can replicate that.
“This football club can, it has 60,000 supporters every game, it’s geared for success, it has a history and tradition of competing at the highest level. So there shouldn’t be a barrier to that.
“You’ve got to have domestic success because that gets you into it, but beyond that, you’ve got to be aspirational enough to say, well, that’s where we want to be as a football club.
“Competing in the Champions League, making an impact in the Champions League, and to be honest, that’s the biggest driver for me.
“I know that I need to have domestic success, but the biggest impact I can make at this football club is to make an impact in Europe.”
Postecoglou says his young squad will have learnt a lot for this season’s experiences.
The boss was just in the door when knocked out of the Champions League qualifiers by FC Midtjylland before finishing third in the Europa League section involving Bayer Leverkusen and Real Betis.
Celtic dropped into the Conference League where they were humbled by Norwegians Bodo/Glimt.
Speaking to Optus Sports, Postecoglou has admitted the campaign was probably too soon for his group to succeed in their first term together and said: “Yeah. If you look back on it, probably.
“I mean, our actual group stage was good. We kind of grew into it. We had Leverkusen and they were a fantastic side and Real Betis who were flying in Spain.
“So I knew it was going to be a massive challenge for us, but when you look at it, we started the group slowly, but we finished pretty decent, pretty strong.
“We ended up winning three games and in a lot of other groups that would’ve got you through.
“It’s the two games against Bodo/Glimt that we kind of let ourselves down.
“It was maybe a bridge too far for us this year to be sort of trying to compete on multiple fronts.
“But the reality of it is, that’s a failure on our behalf because this football club will always be involved in Europe and we want to be involved in the Champions League.
“So you’ve got to be able to cope with that, withstand that, embrace that pressure.
“So we’ll learn from that this year that that part of the journey wasn’t a success for us and I’ve got to make sure that we address those things.
“But I’m sure the players would’ve learned a hell of a lot through that whole exercise.
“As I said, that’s part of this football club. You’ve got to be willing to be up for the fight in multiple tournaments.
“You can’t just say, well, we’re just going to compete in two this year.
That’s not going to happen.”
