Celtic’s Croatian international defender Josip Juranović caught up with his national team captain Luca Modrić after the opening night of the Champions League Group stage on Tuesday evening at Celtic Park has revealed what the Real Madrid superstar had to say about his night in Paradise.
Juranović also looked ahead to Wednesday’s second match in Group F against Shakhtar Donetsk in Warsaw, a city he is very familiar with having arrived at Celtic after playing for Legia Warsaw.
After the Celtic’s momentum faded after imposing an hour of high-tempo football on European Champions Real Madrid, Luca Modrić’s skill and experiences kicked in as he delivered a class performance against the Hoops, scoring the second goal with the outside of his boot (similar to his goal against Scotland at Hampden in the Euros) and controlling the midfield.
After the 3-0 defeat, Juranovic caught up with Modric and discussed the game as reported by The Glasgow Times. The Celtic right-back revealed that Modric was amazed by the Celtic support and impressed by the Celtic performance.
“I spoke with him after the game. He was telling me that the crowd was amazing and that we played good, first half especially, and that we need to continue like that.
“What can I say? He’s captain of my national team, a really good person and you saw that he’s a really good player, too,” Jura said.
“It was a game of two halves. The first half we take it very serious, we have our chances, Callum hit the post unfortunately and then second half with Daizen we didn’t score and of course, it’s Real Madrid. If we have our chances and don’t score they will have one and score from it immediately.
“If we take the first half into our next games, there’s much positive to take from that. We need to delete this second half (from our minds) because they didn’t have full chances, it was like half-chances but they took them and we didn’t – that’s all. We gave everything to this match but we didn’t take our chances. We need to look at the video and then we will talk with our manager and see what we need to do. Our confidence is still really high.”
Talking about the shock result in Germany, where Shakhtar defeated Leipzig 4-1, Juranovic reckons that is the kind of result that this competition can throw up. “That’s the Champions League. Everybody is a good team and because of that we are there,” the Celtic man said.
The Celtic fullback is hopeful the travelling Celtic support in the stadium will be boosted by some local support for him as a former Legia player. “I think they will come because of me and maybe we will get three points! Again we will have our fans with us, if not in the stadium then in our minds because (after losing to Real Madrid) we need to give them something.
“We have had a really good start to the season and because of that our confidence is high, especially after the first half (versus Real). If we continue like that then we can take some points. We will fight for second place but if we perform as we did in the first half, then we don’t need to be scared.”
