ON THIS DAY in 2004 Czech Republic’s FK Teplice were the visitors to Celtic Park for the UEFA Cup tie, having knocked out Feyenoord and Kaiserslautern in the earlier rounds.
But they got off to a terrible start conceding in the opening few minutes when Henrik Larsson ran on to Alan Thompson’s through-ball before firing low through the legs of the exposed goalkeeper Tomas Postulka.
And it got worse for Teplice with only 12th minute gone. Vladimir Leitner failed to find Postulka with his back-header and Sutton nipped in to round the goalkeeper and score.
Thompson should have killed the tie off in the 17th minute after Larsson stepped over Pearson’s cross after a clever move, but the midfielder fired over from eight yards. Pearson had two great chances to strengthen Celtic’s position when he beat the offside trap from Jackie McNamara’s pass. But Postulka saved his first effort and Tomas Hunal cleared his follow-up effort off the line.
Teplice had been on the back-foot for much of the first-half but tightened up after the break. Karel Rada wasted a rare opportunity to reduce the deficit after 81 minutes following a corner. The Teplice defender fired wildly over after a nice turn 10 yards from the Celtic goal.
Stan Varga came close with two headers for Celtic before Larsson finally pounced on a Stilian Petrov corner to give Celtic a third goal and a commanding lead to take into the return leg.
Here is Martin O’Neill taking after the game and the highlights…
