Yesterday I wrote an article which touched on how a Norwegian footballing website had expressed their surprise that Celtic had rejected the opportunity to train on the artificial surface at the Aspmyra Stadion, the home ground of Bodø/Glimt, ahead of Thursday nights must win game in the Europa Conference League.
The website explains that Roma also failed to take advantage of the chance to train at the stadium in the lead up to their group stage encounter with the Norwegians, which saw Jose Mourinho’s men get beaten 6-1 in one of the biggest shocks so far in the competition. They felt that Celtic would have paid attention to this error by the Italians and accepted the invitation to train on a surface vastly different than what the players would be used to at Celtic Park.
I explained in my article that the writer may not realise that Celtic have a history of playing on artificial pitches in Scotland, where only last season a quarter of the league were actually using one. Thankfully it is only Livingston this season but we have also had extra experience on these pitches during cup competitions.
As reported by footballscotland, Ange Postecoglou set the record straight on this matter during today’s press conference, and as I thought he would he explained that his team have experience of playing on artificial surfaces and that he sees absolutely no benefit of flying over a day earlier just to get used to the pitch.
The 56-year-old Celtic boss said: “Here in Scotland we, obviously, have exposure to artificial pitches, we have already had two games this year on an artificial pitch so there is no a great deal to be gained.
“Every week has a different challenge. If you are expecting that after one session you are going to find some miracle on an artificial pitch that you haven’t thought about, that is going to win you the game, then you fall into the wrong trap.
“I have been involved in football for a long time, especially at national team level, but even in Australia, where you have to deal with extreme climatic conditions, extreme pitch conditions.
“When I was with the national team we were travelling from cold climates to the Middle East in literally 24 hours, bumpy pitches to slow pitches, and what I found in the end is that the best approach is to make sure that your players are always prepared to deal with whatever challenges there are.
“There is no easy solutions. Us flying there today and having a session on their pitch is going to make absolutely zero difference.
“Us being here, getting a good training session with the boys, getting them prepared for a difficult game tomorrow, is much more important to me.”
As I stated yesterday, over the years Celtic have experienced multiple injuries to players on these type of pitches. With the injury record we have this season it could be that Ange Postecoglou reckons taking the risk of an extra session on the artificial surface isn’t worth it. As he said, Celtic have already played a few times this season on these pitches in Scotland so will be learning nothing new.
Bodø/Glimt manager kjetil Knutsen has stated that the weather conditions are set to be ‘awful’ and knowing this I can imagine that Ange Postecoglou has surmised that this will only make the pitch more treacherous so spending as little time on it as possible may be the most sensible choice for his players.
Conall McGinty
Ah,but there is an easy solution…….we go over there today. The accommodation prices are obviously too high for us to stomach. It isn’t very “ professional “ tbh.They’ve been on about the weather as if we are coming straight from the equator, we know what snow looks like.