PLEASE do not, dear reader, immediately contact the guys in white coats, possessors of the self-hugging cardis, after you have read this little offering from your humble scribe.
I believe Celtic’s most significant performance of a season that is ticking along nicely won’t transpire to be the rollicking 3-1 triumph over an exceptionally strong opponent in RB Leipzig under the lights at Parkhead on Tuesday evening.
Nor will it be the 6-0 demolition of the previously-unbeaten Aberdeen at Hampden at the weekend. I wouldn’t place the 3-0 romp over Philippe Clement’s hapless collection of individuals in the first derby duel of the campaign in that list, either, enjoyable though it was.
The match I believe which will prove to be the most meaningful in a crusade that promises so much at home and abroad will emerge as the seven-goal drubbing on a painful early-October evening in Dortmund.
OH NO…Brendan Rodgers can’t bear to look in Dortmund.
Brendan Rodgers’ players were well and truly turned over during a prolonged period of misery and anguish in a dark corner of North Rhine-Westphalia, a sporting mismatch with our favourites punished for every error.
The Germans, runners-up to Real Madrid in last season’s Final, were miles ahead of the best team in Scotland. They scored seven; it could have been ten.
It wasn’t easy on the eye witnessing Celtic being ruthlessly dismantled before being summarily dismissed. Adrift 5-1 at the interval, you had to shudder at the prospects of what lay ahead in the second period with the 80,000 fans in the Westfalenstadion going doolally with joy and beseeching even more agony to be thrust upon their team’s teetering rivals.
With Europe looking on, you hoped the referee might find it within his heart to display some compassion and call a halt to the lopsided proceedings. It had been akin to Muhammad Ali, performing at his peak, toying with wimpy Woody Allen.
Excruciating doesn’t even come close.
Amid the rubble and the debris of the debacle, however, a team of some substance has emerged in an almost miraculous transformation.
If you learn more about yourself in adversity, that assembly of Celtic performers returned from Germany with skyscraper IQs.
OH YES…Brendan Rodgers acknowledges the fans after Celtic’s triumph over RB Leipzig.
Look at the sheer raw character they exhibited in digging out a point in a dogged scoreless stalemate in Bergamo against an Atalanta team that was good enough to thrash German champions Bayer Leverkusen 3-0 in the Europa League Final only four months earlier.
And what can I add to the thunderous acclaim, so richly deserved, that has been directed towards Brendan Rodgers, Callum McGregor and Co since Tuesday’s fairly breathtaking experience?
Their quality, calibre and class and right to be included in the upper echelons of European football were on parade in a performance that not only lit up the city but illuminated the game of football in general.
The bleak contribution and chastening experience in Dortmund has been replaced with enriching presentations from the same squad of players who have responded to such a humiliation. Clearly, the embarrassment has provoked a startling reaction.
A calamity looks like being an occasion of some consequence to all at the champions as the season develops.
We may yet look back to that thumping and thank the Good Lord for the experience.
ALEX GORDON
