CELTIC have this morning confirmed the date and kick-off time for the first leg of the Champions League first qualifying round against Alashkert of Armenia.
The game, which Alashkert have moved to Yerevan’s Republic Stadium, will kick-off at 8pm local time (5pm Celtic Park time) on Tuesday, 10 July and the second leg will take place at Celtic Park, on Wednesday, 18 July with a 7.45 kick-off.
Assuming we negotiate this hurdle the the next challenge will be to beat the winners of the Rosenborg v Valur Reykjavik tie and should we come through that we’ll have reached the half way stage in the qualifying campaign.
The Alashkert manager Varuzhan Sukiasyan is relishing the prospect of welcoming Celtic on 10 July.
“We face a strong rival and of course we respect them. But there is nothing to fear.
“We have to show the initiative in the two games and try to dictate our game to Celtic.
“We must not forget that we have a number of players who have accumulated international experience in the national team.
“We also have experienced foreigners in our team. We are seriously preparing for the confrontation with Celtic.
“We will do our best to show a beautiful game and make our fans happy.”
Celtic’s Assistant Manager Chris Davies gave the Celtic reaction when the draw was made, and seemed particularly interested in how the players will handle playing in the intense heat that they will experience in that first game.
“At times, you can adapt slightly on a tactical side, how you approach certain phases of a game when it’s so hot. But we are training now in warmer weather and we are going to Austria, which will be warmer, so that will help us prepare for that,” Davies said.
“We travel there first and we are at home second, which is positive. The simplicity of it for us is, if we play to our level, play with our normal way and intensity, then we will beat them. But we won’t be underestimating them.
“There will be no complacency there whatsoever because as we have seen before these teams can be tricky to play against.”
