Absence doesn’t just make the heart grow fonder. It makes the roar seem louder. Celtic Park shook on Tuesday night as the Champions League returned and the shuddering wall of noise was heard across the continent.
Matt O’Riley reckons Hoops fans showed they belong on the biggest stage – but he’s convinced the team did as well. Sure, it turned out rather predictable, with European royalty eventually slapping down the upstarts. But the kings certainly had a wobble on their thrones for a while, with Real Madrid's wily old gaffer Carlo Ancelotti confessing he was worried as his team was made to suffer in spells.
The sheer class came through in the end and it left Celts feeling deflated at what might have been. But O’Riley insisted Ange Postecoglou's quad proved they can cut it among the biggest of big boys. The playmaker will extract every ounce of belief from the performance and he said: “I think we will. We’ve proven we can compete at this level. There are fine margins, obviously. But the result doesn’t show that.
