What this week’s Champions League results say about Celtic

The Celtic Star

·6 March 2025

What this week’s Champions League results say about Celtic

This week’s Champions League results show just how well Celtic performed this season…

Celtic players pose for a photo on pitch prior to the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 League Knockout Play-off second leg match between FC Bayern München and Celtic FC at Allianz Arena on February 18, 2025 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)

This week’s round of Champions League encounters threw up a few eye-catching results that to me proves the opinion that I, and many other Celtic fans, had after we exited the competition a few weeks ago wasn’t just an emotional outpouring after Celtic’s heroic European campaign, but one that stands up to scrutiny. I stated in an article the day after our exit that this Celtic team was on the cusp of achieving something special on the continent, and it’s a belief in this team that has only grown since then.

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Nicolas Kuehn of Celtic celebrates scoring his team’s first goal during the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 League Knockout Play-off second leg match between FC Bayern München and Celtic FC at Allianz Arena on February 18, 2025 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

I’ll start with last night’s game in Munich that saw Bayern sweep aside domestic rivals Bayern Leverkusen 3-0 which leaves them with one foot in the quarter final stage with the away leg still to come in the BayArena next week. Heading into this game many had doubted how strong this Bayern team actually was, with the fans of Glasgow’s basket case club unsurprisingly their biggest critics.

After they scraped past Celtic all we heard from theRangers fans was that this was an extremely poor Bayern team, one of the worst they had seen. They were far from Bayern’s only critics’ however, with many so called ‘experts’ in the media ready to dismiss their chances of claiming yet another European Cup this season.

What these bitter naysayers from across the city know about football at the elite level could be written on a cigarette paper yet they told everyone who would listen that our performance over two legs was nothing to write home about, as under Vincent Kompany this Bayern squad was hopeless.

Vincent Kompany, Head Coach of Bayern Munich, reacts during the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 League Knockout Play-off second leg match between FC Bayern München and Celtic FC at Allianz Arena on February 18, 2025 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

The fact that they were comfortably leading a strong Bundesliga was lost on them, or didn’t fit their narrative more like. They surmised that Bayer Leverkusen would easily knock them out in the next round, using the recent game against the pair where Bayern failed to register a shot on target as evidence the Bavarians were lambs to the slaughter.

What they failed to grasp however was the context of that last game between the pair. As i mentioned Bayern have a comfortable lead in the Bundesliga, so taking a point in an away game against your biggest rivals in a game that the home team had to win was actually an excellent result in the grand scheme of things.

It explains why Bayern sat in, making sure they didn’t lose the game first and foremost. Game management and viewing a game in the larger context of the league title race is obviously lost on these geniuses.

Daizen Maeda of Celtic battles for possession with Leon Goretzka of Bayern Munich during the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 League Knockout Play-off second leg match between FC Bayern München and Celtic FC at Allianz Arena on February 18, 2025 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)

Bayern Munich again proved how formidable they are on home soil, especially in European competitions. Their record at the Allianz Arena is outstanding, with very few teams ever leaving with a result. The fact Celtic were seconds away from defeating them there is something the players and manager should be extremely proud of. Whether they go on to win this year’s Champions League will be interesting to watch, but either way I can’t envisage any team going to Munich and putting on a much better performance than we did.

Another result that caught the eye was on Tuesday night, as Dutch giants PSV Eindhoven went down 7-1 at home to Arsenal. The reason I found this one interesting is it’s a result we too found ourselves on the end of against Borussia Dortmund back in October.

Serhou Guirassy celebrates scoring his team’s fourth goal during the UEFA Champions League 2024/25 League Phase MD6 match between Borussia Dortmund and Celtic FC at BVB Stadion Dortmund on October 01, 2024 (Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)

At the time people used it as a stick to beat Celtic with, stating that Brendan Rodgers will never learn and that Celtic aren’t capable of competing on this level. I was at the game in Dortmund and although I was gutted at the result, I felt afterwards like it was just one of those games where absolutely everything just fell in place for the home team on the night.

PSV have done excellent this season to get to the last 16. They put Italian giants Juventus out in the last round and previously had a few great results in the group stages such as beating Liverpool and getting a draw against PSG in Paris. They would have expected to have given Arsenal a good game, especially on home soil but absolutely nothing fell their way on the night. Even though the two teams stats were almost identical, Arsenal took all their chances and PSV spurned theirs, much like our game in Dortmund.

UEFA Champions League, Dortmund v Celtic Glasgow 01 10 2024 Fans of Celtic at the start of the match. Photo BEAUTIFUL SPORTS/Buriakov

They aren’t the only team who has been good this season yet been on the end of a thrashing. French club Brest were on the end of a 7-0 defeat against PSG in the last round after having a sensational campaign up until that point. Feyenoord, who are still in the competition, took a 6-1 beating off Lille a few weeks ago. Atletico Madrid took a 4-0 hammering from Benfica earlier in the competition.

My point is these kind of results can happen at this level if you have an off night or things just happen to fall the way of your rivals. That night in Dortmund didn’t prove we aren’t good enough at this level, it just proves that like in those other examples I provided that these results do happen regularly in this competition as it is full of Europe’s best teams.

I suppose that’s easy to forget however when you spend most of your time battling it out in Europe’s second tier competition.

Conall McGinty