Callum McGregor highlights one significant plus in the last minutes of Celtic’s defeat vs Feyenoord.
Callum McGregor was keen for some positivity after Celtic lost their Champions League opener against Feyenoord on Tuesday night.
The Dutch side were 2-0 winners at their De Kuip home, benefiting from some moments of ill-discipline in the Celtic ranks. Summer arrivals Gustaf Lagerbielke and Odin Thiago Holm were both sent off in a second half that also saw Feyenoord net and have a penalty saved.
With Celtic playing 30 minutes with nine men, the team actually did well to come away with just a two-goal defeat. That desire to keep the score down could be vital come the end of the Champions League group stage campaign.
McGregor was certainly keen to bring up that desire in the closing stages as he spoke to TNT Sports shortly after full-time.
“I think the boys hung in there well,” the captain said. “Could be easy to go three, four, five at that point, which is testament to the group.
“Hopefully, they’ll be walking off thinking that we didn’t give up, didn’t quit. There’s another game to get them back at Celtic Park.
“We have to take the lesson that you have to play with 11 men at this level. It’s hard enough with eleven men, never mind when you go to nine. So we have to take the learning in that.
“We’ve got five games to try and get us out of the group. But I think the most positive thing was how we started the game and then the fact that we didn’t give up when we went to nine men.
“Disappointing night, but we’ve got five games to try and fix it.”
In reflection, it was actually a bit of a miracle that we didn’t ship more than one goal in the second half.
Feyenoord missed a penalty and had the ball in the net three times, only for two of them to be ruled out for tight offsides. They had a few other chances that were either saved by Joe Hart or flashed over the bar.
The team didn’t completely buckle in the closing stages, as we have seen virtually every other Scottish side do in Europe so far this season.
Of course, simply not buckling isn’t good enough for Celtic. We should be looking to attain positive results from games like last night. That’s why we’re all feeling a fair amount of disappointment now.
But we have to look forward. McGregor is right that we still have five games to salvage this Champions League campaign. The team has a lot of maturing to do at this level.
