It ended up minus two in Glasgow for Celtic but Ange Postecoglou ’s men have been warned they are in for an even more chilling experience in the Arctic Circle.
The Parkhead side are feeling the heat as they attempt to chase down Bodo Glimt’s 3-1 first leg lead from last week. But midfielder Elias Hagen reckons the Hoops could end up freezing just like Jose Mourinho ’s Roma.
The Norwegians were ice cool when they hit the Serie A side for six in the Europa Conference League group stage and Celts will need to be prepared for some pretty extreme conditions.
Bodo is one of Europe’s more northerly cities, well inside the Arctic Circle, where the winters are dark and the Northern Lights are bright.
But the thermometer doesn’t tell the full story as there’s a storm waiting for the Scots tomorrow. And Hagen, a standout at Parkhead, said: “The temperatures are not really cold right now. It’s maybe two or three degrees below.
“But the wind makes it feel more like minus 12. That’s pretty cold! This is why we do so much running on the pitch, you can’t stay still in this weather!
“At Bodo it’s actually the wind that’s worse than anything else.
“The temperature isn’t really too bad. When we played Roma it may have only been a couple of degrees under freezing but because of the icy wind it felt so much worse.
“It felt like minus 20 and was absolutely freezing and you could see what it did to them.
“I hope it makes us tough playing in conditions like that but I know the Scots are really tough too so we will see.”
Hagen reckons the conditions and the set-up spooked Roma, with the freezing wind, the plastic pitch and 5500 locals giving it laldy. Hagen revealed the Italian giants’ manager was left bitter back then – but it was nothing to do with the biting breeze.
He said: “All the Roma officials and staff were ordered outside the dressing room after the game. Mourinho wanted only the players in the dressing room after the game. I think he was pretty mad! After about 15 minutes he let the rest of his staff in.
“Of course we never expected to win 6-1, that would have been silly. But we had nothing to lose and just went for it and it was an incredible match which was really enjoyable.
“Roma were complaining about the conditions from the moment they landed. They were using their energy in the wrong way.”
Celtic can’t afford to do the same or the European dream will be on ice for another year. But it won’t be straight-forward on the Aspmyra Stadium’s plastic pitch – where Bodo haven’t lost since Legia Warsaw’s 3-2 victory at the start of July.
Bodo have become a serious force on their homeland and while the rest of Europe are now catching up, local rivals have known for a while it’s a dangerous place to go.
Celtic will have their work cut out as Glimt will go full pelt again and Hagen said: “We haven’t lost at home since last summer. I don’t know what makes us so strong at home but when we are at home teams tend to drop back and have a lot of respect for our qualities.
“They come here and are happy if they can get a draw because of our quality.
“It gives us a huge advantage because it gives us almost all of the ball all of the time – and we are good with the ball.
“We create a lot of chances and we always believe we can score from them.”
The Norwegians certainly took their chances in Scotland.
Hagen admitted he was looking forward to sampling the Parkhead atmosphere.
But he didn’t quite get the full experience as Bodo managed to stun the home crowd with an early goal, followed up by another and then the late body blow after the Hoops seemed to have dug out a route back.
Hagen said: “It wasn’t our plan to silence Celtic Park – but we knew that could happen if we performed well.
“We know from previous European games if we are doing well then sometimes the crowd can turn their backs on their team.
“When we were in Rome, for example, we were leading 1-0 at half-time and everyone was shouting and booing. That helps us because if the home crowd are booing then you know you are doing something right.
“That didn’t happen last week but I enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a lot of fun playing at Celtic Park.
“When we played in front of 40,000 fans in Italy it was a totally different game because you couldn’t communicate with each other.
“That helped us when we went to Glasgow I think. You just have to play on your instincts and trust each other.
“But we still need to put in a good performance again because Celtic are a good team. Hopefully we can do it.”
