Before lamenting another bruising Champions League defeat and speculating on where this one might leave Celtic’s chances of finding a pathway through to the knockout stages – which are now considerably slimmer than they were – let’s acknowledge what last night in Leipzig was all about.
This was not just any standard European tie. This was top-level football in its finest, most exhilarating form. A blistering, 100 miles an hour encounter which thundered along at such an infeasible pace it was exhausting just to watch let alone compete in.
All thrashed out between two teams who don’t have a reverse gear between them, far less any intention of parking buses. And constructed by two like-minded bosses who share futuristic – if high tariff – templates of what the modern game ought to look like. As a result, this coming together of two teams was a breathless affair – an intoxicating cocktail of slick attacking interplay and some utterly suicidal defending.
