The Ange Postecoglou revolution is certainly taking shape and happening far earlier than many of us would have assumed possible some eight months ago.
The squad has been overhauled, the style of play revolutionised, and on the back of regaining the League Cup in December, Celtic are looking to re-exert domestic dominance, by reclaiming the league title, in a race the Hoops sit three points clear with nine games to go. And in the Scottish Cup Celtic, already in the Quarter Final will look to get past the challenge of Dundee United and hopefully complete the Treble.
Yet for Ange Postecoglou it is unlikely domestic dominance in Scotland would have been what attracted him to these shores. The pull of Celtic would have been big, but so would the potential in what could be viewed as a sleeping giant in European terms, one that now has to be awoken.
Celtic’s European ambitions were put to sleep by a disregarding of ambition and a narrow focus given to domestic success. That had never been enough for Celtic in the past and it’s something we must remedy – particularly with the Champions League format due to be revolutionised.
Now for season 2024/25 UEFA’s the Champions League modernisation should pique the interest of Celtic’s cautious board and embolden Ange Postecoglou’s vision for Celtic.
Under UEFA’s new changes the format will change. There will now be 36 teams competing – up from 32 – and the group stage approach will be discarded for one league table.
Each team will now play ten games, five at home and five away, meaning there will be 100 more games in total. The top eight sides will automatically move into the last 16 knockout stage.
The teams who then finish from 9th to 24th in the league will enter a two-legged play off, producing a further eight sides to complete the last 16 stage.
For Celtic this simply has to be where our football club aims to be and it will involve a more progressive type of thinking than that exhibited by Chairman Ian Bankier at last year’s AGM when he said –
“If we talk about Europe, it’s a much different environment to what it was 20 years ago. We all know that, you know that. You go into the Champions League and you get absolutely pasted by the likes of Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. Celtic Football Club is not the Qatar Government. There’s a whole set of different players out there with completely different pockets.”
Celtic have a route to Champions League football that should in most years be easily navigated by forward planning, preparation and a belief we belong there. For too long Celtic have been ill-prepared, and if we have a plan it seems to be to move from season to season, rather than have any real mix of medium to long term strategical thought behind it.
Will that now change? In short, it has to. Celtic have a manager who has made incredible strides in eight months, imagine what he could do with the weight of every department at Celtic bolstering the football operation in the direction of Champions League travel? With a further two seasons under his belt and with the right support offered to him, Celtic could be ready to enter this tournament and also compete. That has to be the ambition, as it certainly will be for the manager.
And as a club who is a PLC, then the shareholders would surely demand that the Celtic Board are suitably prepared for access to an income stream that could net the club in the region of £70-£80m per season, that is not something that can any longer be offset with the promise of a player sale for falling short, as appears palatable now. Instead, it is something that is achievable and massively promising financially and would impact shareholder dividends accordingly.
For a club fearful of speculating to accumulate, the finances required to be ready, if matched by the forward planning to achieve it, need be a fraction of the income it could generate. Given this could also be a season-on-season access to a great deal of funding for the shareholders this really shouldn’t take a lot of thinking through. It should be moved to the top of CEO Michael Nicholson’s key performance indicators and in turn those of a manager who would certainly welcome the challenge.
For too long Celtic have disregarded European ambition and have managed the football club almost entirely around domestic success. In a two- horse race this is both short-sighted and ambitionless, but now with Champions’ League changes afoot Celtic cannot afford to think so parochially. The low hanging fruit of footballing prestige, and the income which accompanies it, is now simply too much to ignore.
Celtic have the right manager in place to be ready to compete in this environment in 2024/25 season, it is now down to the board to ensure he’s given the tools to match his abilities.
Niall J
Disgusting banner if celtic was not involved there would be know banner I hope police are involved