Q: Would it be nice to get your own back then for teams having to target you because of him would be nice to try and get your own back and get one over on him?
Alistair Johnston: “Yeah, it would be nice. Trust me. There would be some bragging rights going into the March window if we could pull this one off. We’ll take it game by game here. It’s 180 minutes. So yeah, we just got to get through this first 90 and use Celtic Park to our advantage. Hopefully, we can make it a memorable night.”
Celtic v RB Leipzig – UEFA Champions League – League Stage – Celtic Park (back to front, left to right) Celtic’s Nicolas Kuhn, Auston Trusty, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Arne Engels, Alistair Johnston, goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, Daizen Maeda, Greg Taylor, Callum McGregor, Reo Hatate and Kyogo Furuhashi before the UEFA Champions League, league stage match at Celtic Park, on Tuesday November 5, 2024. Photo Andrew Milligan
Q: How much have this Celtic squad grown since the first game? You played eight games and are now in the playoffs. What have you learned and how much do you feel the group’s improved in this campaign?
Alistair Johnston: “I think for me being in the Champions League last year, that group stage, six matches, there’s a reason why they call it a league phase now. It genuinely feels like a league. You played that many matches, obviously, eight individual opponents that are different, unique opponents. It truly feels like a league, and you are going to learn. It’s just like how we’re in the domestic league, how we’ve grown and figured things out as time goes on. I think that we’ve also noticed that within the Champions League.
“Okay, this is what the minimum standards are and away from home versus home, how it’s going to be different, how you need to impose yourself when you’re the home team versus the way that you need to be comfortable defending and understand that it’s not always going to be a comfortable score line.
“Sometimes we have, domestically, where we are dominating the ball. It’s not always going to be that. You need to have the bravery and the understanding that we’re going to have to have periods and spells where we are going to have to defend our box and defend our final third, and you need to enjoy that as well.
Daizen Maeda of Celtic is seen during the UEFA Champions League training on January 28, 2025 in Birmingham. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
“I think that that’s something that our back four always enjoys in terms of the defending part of it. You could see how much the guys like Daizen Maeda do and when you have that kind of buy-in from the front of the pitch, I think it filters through the whole group and I think that that’s where the learning’s been in that we are more comfortable in a defensive shape than going toe-to-toe with the big teams.
“There’s a reason why we made it this far, why we’re into the knockouts, but now you get the titans of European football, so it’s a great opportunity, but at the same time, it’s not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination.”
