MORITZ JENZ says he feels for teammate Carl Starfelt after picking up his latest injury, but that he is ready to make the most of the Swede’s misfortune to cement his own place in the Celtic team alongside Cameron Carter-Vickers.
Starfelt will be out until after the international break after picking up a knee injury against Rangers, and Jenz slotted in at the heart of the defence against Real Madrid in his absence.
The centre back is hoping that his close off-field relationship with Carter-Vickers will allow their partnership to flourish on it over the coming matches, and mean that Starfelt’s time on the sidelines will be prolonged as a result.
“First of all, it is a shame that he got injured, because he’s a fantastic guy and a fantastic player,” Jenz said.
“But for me it is an opportunity to continue shining and continue to improve, that’s what I hope to do.
“I enjoy playing alongside [Cameron] a lot. We have a great relationship and a great partnership I would say too. We understand one another very well. Hopefully we can continue to have a good partnership.
“We both have different strengths and different styles of play, and that makes us complement one another work well together.
“You need that, a little bit of something different from both players, and that is what makes the partnership special.
“We have a great relationship off the pitch as well. We live close to each other, so we see each other quite often and then obviously in training too.
“We speak a lot about a lot of diverse topics and we have a lot of fun. He has a good sense of humour but I don’t want to go into it too much!”
Jenz is bracing himself for a different sort of test against Shakhtar Donetsk tonight than he faced when up against Real Madrid, with the Ukrainians likely to allow Celtic to dominate possession and hit them on the counter attack.
That won’t be anything new to Celtic though, and Jenz feels that the tactics they face at domestic level may actually help them deal with the approach of Igor Jovicevic’s team.
“It is definitely a different challenge to last week, but it will be a big challenge again,” he said.
“They like to defend in a medium block and play on the counter attack, but we’re obviously used to that in Scotland, having the ball a bit more.
“We will be prepared and we will be careful with their counter attacks.”
