Ange Postecoglou has shut down questions about risking it all against Real Madrid with his style of play.
Celtic welcome the Spanish champions and 14-times winners of the European Cup and Champions League to Parkhead for their Group F opener on Wednesday. The Hoops head into it in blistering form, having scored 17 goals and conceded one in their last three games against Dundee United, Ross County and Rangers.
Some have pointed out that continuing to attack the way they do against a team of Madrid’s calibre is a big risk and is asking for trouble. But the Aussie head coach firmly believes that the rewards on offer justify his approach, and asked reporters at his pre-match press conference if they had a system that could guarantee his team wouldn’t come a cropper against the might of Madrid, then he’d be all ears, before stating that one simply didn’t exist.
“If there’s a system that doesn’t give you risk, then I'd love to hear it," Postecoglou said. "If there’s something that you can guarantee me tomorrow night that if I play this way, you’ll guarantee will minimise risk, then it doesn’t exist.
“Any system you play, any approach you take, there’s inherent risk. But sometimes, the greater the risk, the greater the opportunity. Because we’re trying to do things a little bit differently. We don’t want to be like every other team. With that, there’s always the possibility that you’ll stumble.
“That’s fine. I’ve stumbled in the past. The important thing is you dust yourself off and keep going. It’s not about being confident of winning. All we can do is control our performance. Every game we play, we try and play the game a certain way and be the best we can be in every game.
“That’s what we’ve done in every game so far, it’s what we did last year and it's what we’ll try and do tomorrow night. We’ll try and play our football, be the best team we can be and the end result is often a consequence of strong performance.
“There’s no point in us thinking about winning, losing or any other result. The first thing we want to do is make sure we perform, because we’re playing against a top football team with fantastic players and a brilliant manager. What we want to do is go out there and offer the best of ourselves to measure up against that.”
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