Celtic suffer casualties and embarrassment in all-time European low as Champions League torpedoed

Their Champions League dream has been torpedoed in such a fashion that it’s possible to worry about what comes next for them and their fans, who are already on the edge.

Celtic were just three minutes away from securing Champions League group stage football and the riches that come with it. Granted, they were tottering. All the momentum was with LASK, who had scored twice in the second half and were gunning for an all-important fourth to earn another 30 minutes. It came from Florian Flecker’s header. It was entirely predictable when LASK finished off the job in extra time following Samuel Adeniran second goal of the night, which was another sweet strike from distance after substitute Luke McCowan had been dispossessed.

It put the cap on arguably the worst night in the club’s European history, certainly the most costly (at least since last year). Viljami Sinisalo’s penalty save shortly afterwards to deny Adeniran a hat-trick was a mere detail.

The keeper had earlier performed seeming heroics when clawing out a header from Joao Victor Tornich from under the bar. Unfortunately for Celtic, Flecker was on hand to stoop and head the rebound in to make it 4-1 to LASK on the night and 4-4 on aggregate. The Austrian’s surname resembled what was being uttered by Celtic fans inside the stadium as well as those watching at home.

A VAR check confirmed Flecker had been played onside by Celtic’s Dane Murray, who had replaced the stricken Colby Donovan after 74 minutes. Nothing was going right. Cameron Carter-Vickers, meanwhile, was limping around, and had been for some time. He was eventually replaced by Anthony Ralston. Striker Kasper Hogh was rendered almost completely immobile in extra time.

Celtic have casualties to cope with as well as embarrassment. It had all started so well, too. Callum McGregor was credited with the opener following a deflection, his first goal for Celtic in Europe in five years. It ought to have given the Scottish champions the platform on which to see out the tie in a straightforward manner.

Only 21 minutes had elapsed but Celtic now had a four-goal aggregate lead. Then it all started to unstitch, catastrophically.

Football historians were sent scurrying towards history books. Celtic took a three-goal lead to Budapest against MTK in the Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1964 and lost 4-0 in the away leg. Surely they were not about to do something similar, with a lot more money at stake?

O’Neill prowled the touchline. He wouldn’t be human if he was not wondering what he was doing in this situation when he could have been sitting on his sofa at home. Or working in a studio as a pundit, as he was last year at the same stage of the competition when Celtic played Kairat and went out on penalties. This was a lot worse than that bleak night in Kazakhstan under Brendan Rodgers.

Strangely enough, Celtic looked rather more comfortable in the opening stages than last midweek, when they came close to conceding twice before establishing a handsome lead. In fact, Celtic ought to have edged ahead inside five minutes when a clever Yang Hyun-Jun ball from the left was flicked towards the far post by Mika Baur, where it was begging to be tapped in. Hogh was not where Celtic hoped he would be. The Dane passed up two other opportunities to score. They seemed inconsequential at the time.

The Austrian fans certainly hadn’t given up on anything. The Raiffeisen Arena was full. The grass had been kept long, perhaps in a bid to disrupt Celtic’s rhythm and ball players such as Nygren and Camilo Duran, the two key men six days earlier. Both were shadows of the players we know they can be on a horrible, horrible night for Celtic.

Nygren’s sloppiness started the complete collapse. With Celtic sitting pretty on the half hour mark, the Swede blindly stroked the ball to his keeper without noticing the lurking Moses Usor, who finished well past the stranded Sinisalo. It gave the hosts’ heart. It now seemed a matter of critical importance for Celtic to keep out LASK until half time. And though they did, surviving some very near things in the process, it was not the end of the matter, far from it.

The Austrians struck just two minutes into the second half, after a move down the right that saw Auston Trusty dragged out wide and then too easily beaten. Robert Ljubicic stroked home from the edge of the box, with Sinisalo perhaps too slow to get down to a ball struck low to his left.

The game was only going in one direction. It was incumbent on Celtic to make sure this wasn’t true of the tie. They still had a two-goal advantage, although that was halved to one when the impressive Adeniran got the goal his efforts deserved following skipper Sascha Horvath’s lay-off. And what a strike it was, with the American curling into the corner and just inside Sinisalo’s right hand post from 25 yards. There was still over half an hour remaining, abundant time time for LASK, now in the mood, to win the tie, never mind level it.

They came so close to doing the former at least just over ten minutes later, when Usor blasted against the underside of the bar from ten yards out. Somehow the ball stayed out, even after hitting Sinisalo on the way down before Kieran Tierney booted it away to safety. The fourth goal was only delayed, as was confirmation of Celtic’s fate following extra time.