GORDON Strachan effectively conceded that Celtic's chances of progressing from Group E of the Champions League, thereby reaching the last 16 of Europe's premier tournament for the third year in succession, were virtually ended by last night's 1-0 defeat by Villarreal in Spain.
"click here to view a slideshow of last night's match"Strachan also insisted that the free kick from which Marcos Senna, the Spanish side's captain, scored the only goal was a mistake by the Hungarian referee, Viktor Kassai, strongly hinting that the match official had been duped by a "dive" by Joseb Llorente, the Villarreal striker, under a challenge from the Celtic midfielder, Paul Hartley, three-quarters of the way through a closely-contested match. "We've looked at it," said Strachan, "and I can tell you that all of our players are not convinced it was a free kick. Only the player involved (Llorente] will know himself whether he dived. I can't point the finger at anyone, that wouldn't be right. But the television pictures will tell you.
"Of course, the defeat leaves us a mountain to climb in terms of qualifying for the knockout stage, there is no denying that. But there's nothing to do now but wait and see what pans out. But there's no doubt that qualification now is going to be very hard."
Despite a pleasing performance that confounded expectations of a more humiliating defeat, however, this was Celtic's seventh successive loss in Champions League group matches away from home since they drew with Barcelona in November 2004 and their 17th in 18 away matches overall. They have also failed to score in their last four outings on foreign soil, having lost last season to Shakhtar Donetsk, Benfica and Milan, but secured passage to the last 16 with three home victories.
Now they have just one point and no goals from their opening two matches of the current campaign, having played a severely disappointing scoreless draw at home to Aalborg on Matchday One. Their next two matches are against the reigning European champions, Manchester United, at Old Trafford on 21 October and at Celtic Park two weeks later. United's 3-0 victory over Aalborg in Denmark last night takes them to the top of the group on goal difference from Villarreal, the pair now three points ahead of the Scots and the Danes.
Strachan, however, was "very pleased" by the performance of his players at a notoriously difficult venue. Villarreal are presently top of the Spanish League, and left Old Trafford with a scoreless draw in their opening Champions League match a fortnight ago.
"We asked the players simply to give a performance tonight, and they certainly did that," said Strachan. "I know it's been close before in other hard places, such as Milan, but that's the most comfortable I've seen us in this kind of match. There were times when we really worried them tonight.
"And Villarreal are a top-class team, one of the best in Europe, there's no doubt about that. In Marcos Senna, as we saw, they have a world-class player, unfortunately for us. But there was a lot to like about the way our lads went about their work, especially in the first half, although after about 55 minutes Villarreal began to press more as we did not retain possession as well as we had earlier in the match."
Strachan's substitution of Shaun Maloney with striker Scott McDonald almost brought Celtic an equaliser within three minutes of his appearance, the little striker sending a volley dipping just over the bar.
"I think that was typical of us not getting the break you need on occasions like these," he said. "We were trying to make the substitution when Senna scored with his free kick."
The full article contains 633 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
