THESE are the games that can make a player’s career. Those were the words of Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers prior to this seismic meeting between his team and Rangers. And they can define them too.
Paulo Bernardo may well just have arrived as a Celtic player as a result of this one, and when all is said and done in the career of Kyogo Furuhashi, it may well be the moments he has produced in these encounters that cement his place in the club’s history.
You never doubted him, did you? The Japanese striker may well have been struggling for form of late, and he came into this game on the back of a run of just one goal in his last nine games. But when he sees those blue shirts, he just seems to come alive, and what a strike he produced to get his sixth goal in six against Rangers.
He picked the ball up a good old distance from goal, and attracted one or two groans as he refused what looked an easy ball to slip Daizen Maeda in on Jack Butland. They shouldn’t have worried. He had something else in mind.
The forward dropped a shoulder to create a yard of space, then curled an absolute beauty with his left foot into the Rangers keeper’s top left-hand corner.
Anyone who has watched him struggle at times over the last couple of months to hit the proverbial cow’s bottom with a banjo must have wondered where it came from. It has been a tough spell for him, no doubt, perhaps the toughest since he arrived in Scotland.
But form is temporary, and class is permanent, as they say. And all the debate about how the tactics of Rodgers had nullified his threat, or how he hadn’t been getting enough service, didn’t seem to matter when he simply thumped one in from 30-odd yards.
As for Bernardo, his goal was just as vital and as easy on the eye as Kyogo’s. But it was his all-round contribution that caught the eye.
Quite apart from his own stunning strike to open the scoring and send Celtic Park into delirium, the Portuguese midfielder was the man who – more than any other in the green and white apart from, perhaps, the imperious Callum McGregor – helped carry them to a crucial and potentially season-defining result.
He was everywhere, particularly in the first half as Celtic recovered from a slow start to impose themselves on Rangers. He almost scored with a glancing header that Maeda just failed to tuck in at the back post, but it was his high pressing and harrying that ensured Celtic more than matched the energy John Lundstram and Dujon Sterling tried to bring to the midfield area.
He threatened again when he cracked a low effort into the side-netting, but he didn’t have to wait long for his moment.
Luis Palma swung in a corner from the Celtic right that was glanced clear to the edge of the area, and Bernardo met it with a thunderous half-volley that was past Butland almost before he could move.
He more than deserved his late ovation from all around the stadium as he took his leave midway through the second half, having more than played his part in his side’s triumph.
Though, those of a Rangers persuasion may argue that Willie Collum in the VAR room more than played his part too. For all that the catchphrase ‘Penalty Rangers’ has entered the Scottish football lexicon of late, it seemed the Ibrox side were hard done by when Alistair Johnston prodded the ball away from Abdallah Sima with his hand inside the area late in the first half.
It later transpired that Sima may have been an offside in the build-up, hence why the penalty wasn’t given, but regardless, the sense of injustice felt by Rangers seemed to rattle them. And when Kyogo’s goal went sailing in just after the interval, the visitor’s heads looked to be gone.
That was exemplified when a mix-up allowed Kyogo to slip the ball in behind for Maeda to chase, with the isolated Leon Balogun left with little choice but to haul him to the ground and accept his medicine in the form of a red card from referee Nick Walsh.
It seemed to cap off a desperately disappointing afternoon for Rangers, the first real bump in the hitherto smooth passage that Philippe Clement was plotting through Scottish football. But from nowhere, the ten men grabbed themselves a lifeline.
Substitute Maik Nawrocki fouled Cyriel Dessers on the edge of the area with a couple of minutes to go, and James Tavernier – who had been poor on the day to that point – curled a trademark effort into the top corner.
Despite the jangling nerves around Celtic Park and the seemingly interminable added time from their point of view, it was too little too late for Clement’s men.
The Belgian had led his team to Celtic Park on the back of a 16-match unbeaten run, and a win would have put them in pole position to usurp Celtic in the New Year with the games they have in hand over their rivals.
Instead, it was Rodgers who cemented his position as the mastermind of this fixture, Kyogo who cemented his place as the king of it, and Celtic who cemented their place at the top of the league.
