Celtic must shake off lacklustre form to end 2025 with a bang

Callum McGregor looked back with some satisfaction on the Celtic performance in Belgrade last week but there’s also a nagging thought in the skipper’s mind that the team came away with two points short of what the team’s performance merited against Red Star Belgrade on the Europa League opener…

“Maybe we should have won in Belgrade, but it finished in a draw,” McGregor said, looking back on the 1-1 draw ahead of Thursday night’s match at Celtic Park against Portuguese outfit Sporting Braga. “When you’re in the stadium, with the atmosphere and everything else — in the first game — you don’t quite know what to expect.

“We’ve dropped down from the Champions League to here, and everyone expects us to win. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s easy,’ but it’s not — you have to earn the right. And they’ve got some good players too. I think, on the whole, we probably just edged it. On another night, we could’ve won it.

“It shows the level of our team — to go there, create enough chances to win the game, and not give up too many at the other end. I thought it was a good start and a good point earned in Belgrade,” Calmac concluded as reported by Newsquest outlet TCW.

With that valuable away point already on the board, Celtic now turn their attention to the first of the four home games and it’s at Celtic Park where the team needs to maximise their points haul if they are to make meaningful progress in the group stages of European football’s second tier tournament.

“Hopefully, we just fly through the group. That’s the thing — we have to prove we’re a good side. It’s easy to say, ‘Yeah, they should do well,’ but we have to actually make sure we do it.

“That’s important. We have to earn the right — the same way we did in the Champions League last year. We can’t take any game for granted. We’re there, we’re hungry to win, and we have to perform at a good level to get points.

“Hopefully, after the eight games, we’ll have enough points to get through — and from there, the competition could really come alive.”

2025 so far has hardly been a vintage year for Celtic, yes the title was one after a sizeable lead was built in the first half of the campaign but meaningful victories have been few and far between when you look back the football that’s been played.

The biggest disappointments of course were the Scottish Cup Final defeat to a poor Aberdeen side and the Champions League elimination in the play-offs to Kairat, this being the most costly and one of the most embarrassing results in Celtic’s history.

As we mentioned last week the Europa League campaign – in the group stages at least – is all about atonement for Celtic. Callum McGregor is correct in his assessment on the match in Belgrade but we could add the Scottish Cup final and many others, including the game against Hibs at the weekend, to the list of games we should have won in 2025 but didn’t.

This needs to change and ideally that needs to happen in the match against Sporting Braga on Thursday night where we need both a good performance and a victory.

Continues on the next page…Celtic v Sporting Braga – An early Europa League kickoff but not our earliest…