Ange Postecoglou has exceeded expectations already this season. Having arrived at a club bereft of confidence and with wantaway players still on the books, the Celtic manager has built a squad capable of competing for a league title. Having already claimed a League Cup, and with a Scottish Cup semi-final against theRangers on the horizon, a scarcely believable Treble is now seen as realistic rather than unlikely.
Yet Postecoglou won’t be satisfied solely with domestic success, instead the rich European history of the Lisbon Lions inspires the Celtic manager, and speaking to Optus Sport it’s that history that drives Celtic’s manager to believe he can build a team that can compete both on the home front and in European football, something the club seem to have disregarded in recent years as an aspiration.

“(This club) won a European Cup, how many clubs can say that? It’s one of those clubs that are in rarefied sort of territory, and when you do that, then that sets a standard that, you need to try and uphold. For me, my goal is to get this football club to be playing Champions League and competing.
“There’s some massive clubs (there), but you also look at some other clubs that do well in the Champions League and you think, well, we can replicate that. This football club can, it has 60,000 supporters every game, it’s geared for success, it has a history and tradition of competing at the highest level. So there shouldn’t be a barrier to that.”
“You’ve got to have domestic success because that gets you into it, but beyond that, you’ve got to be aspirational enough to say, well, that’s, that’s where we want be as a football club. (We) want to be competing in the Champions League, making an impact in the Champions League, and to be honest, that’s the biggest driver for me.”
“I know that I need to have domestic success, but the biggest impact I can make at football club is to make an impact in Europe.”

European football has been a step too far for Celtic this season. The Hoops exited the Europa Conference League to Norwegian Champions Bodo/Glimt, the Europa League at the group stages and the Champions League in the Qualifying stage, but that doesn’t make Postecoglou question whether Celtic will be able to compete at that level, it’s just that this time around European football came too soon in the season and the squad wasn’t deep enough to sustain a domestic campaign as well as European aspirations so soon into the manager’s rebuild.

“Yeah. Look, if you look back on it probably (too soon), I mean, our actual group stage was, was good. We kind of grew into it. We had Leverkusen and they were a fantastic side and Real Betis who were flying in Spain. So I knew it was going to be a massive challenge for us, but when you look at it, we started the group slowly, but we finished pretty decent, pretty strong.
“We ended up winning three games and in a lot of other groups that would’ve got you through. It’s the two games against Bodo/Glimt that we kind of let ourselves down. You’re probably right, it was maybe a bridge too far for us this year to be sort of trying to compete on multiple fronts.
“But the reality of it is, that’s a failure on our behalf because this football club will always be involved in Europe and we want to be involved in the Champions League. So you’ve got to be able to cope with that withstand that, embrace that pressure. So we’ll learn from that this year that, that part of the journey, wasn’t a success for us. And I got to make sure that we address those things, but I’m sure the players, would’ve learned a hell of a lot through that whole exercise.
“As I said, that’s part of this football club. You’ve got to be willing to be up for the fight in multiple tournaments, you can’t just say, well, we we’re just going to compete in two this year. That’s not going to happen.”

To hear a Celtic manager, talk so optimistically about getting Celtic competing in European football again is fantastic to hear. For too long Celtic have appeared to disregard Champions League football as a realistic target, yet the history of Celtic surely demands we do our utmost to be as competitive as possible, despite the obvious challenges it entails.
Postecoglou’s incredible turnaround of Celtic’s domestic fortunes certainly allows the support a belief that given time – and crucially the backing at boardroom level – Celtic can be competing once again in the Champions’ League group stages as a minimum, and you get the impression even that won’t be enough to satisfy Ange Postecoglou.
Niall J