Celtic and the Promised Land

Victor Wanyama head's the opening goal for Celtic against Barcelona

Back in 2005 the year before my leaving certificate I had quite a time comsuming obsession, basically qualifying Irish clubs like Bohemian's or Cork City FC to the Champions League Group Stages on to the knock out stages and ultimately towards winning the tournament via the famous Football Manager portal.
The idea of doing well with an English Premiership club didn't seem out of the ordinary enough and I wanted to try something a little different. Back then the challenges were clear, attracting players of sufficient quality and experience to compete in Europe, generating crowds large enough to feel at home in European competition and most importantly developing a system where players could dramatically lift their workrate from domestic competition and win games against Europe's elite with as little as 20% possession. I also had the challenge of summer football and problems associated with drinking too much coffee but lets leave those aside for now. The conclusion of the exercise if you could call it that was repeating the trick season after season was not possible as the economy known as football would always drive my best players away from the club.

Celtic's performance in beating Barcelona with a paltry 11% possession reminded me of those heady virtual days though Neil Lennon didn't have the comfort of being able to re-load the game if he got his tactics wrong as happened me on so many occasions. Focusing on the Bhoy's performance the achievement becomes more incredible when one considers the gulf between the financial cost of the teams in wages and the respective annual revenues of the clubs. Dig deeper and consider the standard of competition Celtic face in the SPL each week and the elevation in quality required to defend with discipline and timing against Barcelona for 90 minutes and score two goals is more understandable. To put the standard of the league in context the four other teams who qualified for Europe were eliminated this season by the end of August.

Provided Celtic can secure a draw in match five, the club will most likely guarantee themselves a pot of about €20 million and 2 games in the prestigious last 16 round in February all in a season where they will probably have lacked a domestic competitor capable of keeping them on their toes. The challenge ahead will be understanding how far a club with Celtic's resources are capable of travelling and when the glass ceiling will kick into place and push them back down. Since television money and billionaire owners have flocked to Europes biggest leagues in Spain, England, Germany and Italy clubs outside of these leagues without ridiculous non-revenue resources have struggled to avoid yo-yo ing once they reach the pinnacle of their clubs abilities. FC Porto a club of similar size to Celtic endured something of a shrink effect after winning the Champions League in the 2004 season losing their manager and several of their best players that Summer. Other large clubs from relatively minnow leagues such as PSV Eindhoven, Anderlecht and Marseille are also familiar with the negative ramifications of an outstanding season. The challenge for Lennon who undoubtedly loves the club will be keeping hold of Celtic's most important players with the foresight that they probably cannot be replaced with players of equal quality due to the difficulty in attracting players to the SPL in the first place. If that fails Celtic as a football can either accept that consistently challenging in European footballs premier competition is an impossibility in their current position or openly admit that a pan european domestic league is in the clubs best interests.