Bodo/Glimt midfielder Elias Hagen experienced Celtic Park for the first time last Thursday and looking forward to now hosting the Hoops in the second leg in Norway tomorrow night.
As reported by Daily Record, he looked back on his experience, somewhat disappointingly from a Celtic perspective, as enjoyable, as he felt his team was able to silence Celtic Park after taking an early lead, but noticed the Celtic fans didn’t turn on their team as they did when the Norwegian Champions faced Roma.
“It wasn’t our plan to silence Celtic Park – but we knew that could happen if we performed well. We know from previous European games if we are doing well then sometimes the crowd can turn their backs on their team.
“When we were in Rome, for example, we were leading 1-0 at half-time and everyone was shouting and booing. That helps us because if the home crowd are booing then you know you are doing something right.
“That didn’t happen last week but I enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a lot of fun playing at Celtic Park. When we played in front of 40,000 fans in Italy it was a totally different game because you couldn’t communicate with each other. That helped us when we went to Glasgow I think. You just have to play on your instincts and trust each other.
“But we still need to put in a good performance again because Celtic are a good team. Hopefully we can do it.”
Elias Hagen now switches roles from guest to host as Celtic visit the Arctic circle, and the Bodo Glimt star is claiming the hostility will be supplied by the wind chill factor rather than his team or their support.
“The temperatures are not really cold right now. It’s maybe two or three degrees below. But the wind makes it feel more like minus 12. That’s pretty cold! This is why we do so much running on the pitch, you can’t stay still in this weather! At Bodo it’s actually the wind that’s worse than anything else.
“The temperature isn’t really too bad. When we played Roma it may have only been a couple of degrees under freezing but because of the icy wind it felt so much worse. It felt like minus 20 and was absolutely freezing and you could see what it did to them.
“I hope it makes us tough playing in conditions like that but I know the Scots are really tough too so we will see.”
Celtic then will have to overcome a two goal first leg deficit, a sell-out crowd, a plastic pitch and chilling conditions against Bodo/Glimt, but that is not all. The Hoops are also facing a side Hagen proudly points to having a long unbeaten record at the Aspmyra Stadium, with the last defeat coming by way of a 3-2 loss to Legia Warsaw back in July –
“We haven’t lost at home since last summer. I don’t know what makes us so strong at home but when we are at home teams tend to drop back and have a lot of respect for our qualities.
“They come here and are happy if they can get a draw because of our quality. It gives us a huge advantage because it gives us almost all of the ball all of the time – and we are good with the ball. We create a lot of chances and we always believe we can score from them.”
Celtic will certainly face some challenging conditions never mind the opposition in Norway tomorrow night, however the Hoops put in a disappointing performance last week, with too many big players simply off form at the same time, what we need from this game is goals and Celtic play only one way under Ange Postecoglou – on the front foot.
As such we know we can score and we’ll be sure we can outscore Bodo/Glimt in Norway, should our main stars step up to the mark. After that it will be a case of whether or not it will be enough for Celtic to progress. It promises to be quite a journey in more ways than one.
Niall J
