Celtic 0-3 Real Madrid (Vinicius 56′, Modric 60′, Hazard 77′)
CELTIC PARK — Welcome to Paradise, where for most of one night you can believe that anything is possible.
Celtic temporarily went toe to toe with the European champions and offered the best version of themselves. They dreamt of more, of unfathomable victory and humbled champions. Reality wins, this time.
Regrets? Celtic will have a few: that they allowed fatigue to sink in and concentration momentarily to drop; that they wasted chances at 0-0 and so lost their view of dreamland; that the competition to which they return is so weighted against them; that you can push as hard as you can and it is still not enough. Those are the margins between kings and pretenders.
And these are the nights for which Parkhead was built, for which Celtic live. There were cliches of modern football support everywhere: light show, half-and-half scarves, techno music when crowd noise would do just as well.
But above it all, authenticity bursts through and stands above all else. The sound rolls around the stadium, beginning and ending with the bouncing furore of the Green Brigade.
Before kick-off, it appeared that everyone was having a bucket list experience. They simultaneously collected in ones and twos and three, but also hundreds and thousands.
As You’ll Never Walk Alone played out before kick off, 55,000 scarves are held up above 55,000 heads, some of them silhouetted gloriously against the sky at the top of the North Stand.
Then came the Champions League anthem, welcomed as if it marked the birth of a new country. It was a genuinely powerful experience.
For the first hour, we had a wonderful match because it was a wonderful contest. These were teams of opposites, controlled possession vs chaotic whirring, as if a thousand bees had been told that they had 90 minutes to collect enough pollen to last them a lifetime.
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There were spells when Carlo Ancelotti watched his team pass the ball with ludicrous ease, but he also repeatedly threw his arms up in frustration as the Celtic swarm chipped away at their composure.
Celtic legitimately should have scored the first goal, Liel Abada twice snatching at chances assisted by glorious slide rule passes.
Callum McGregor hit the inside of the post with Thibaut Courtois left watching as if following a plane cross the sky. Every time they won a corner or attacking throw-in, it was marked by a semi-deafening roar.
They did not dally over free-kicks to catch their breath or run down the clock, but tried to catch Real Madrid off guard.
Madrid eventually answered the call. Ancelotti presumably reasoned that one counter attack would be all it took, four of five component parts that clicked in 10 touches.
It left Vinicius Jr in space, which is the most dangerous weapon to place at his disposal. The Brazilian was Real’s best player and their constant out ball.
If Real are the best in the world at one thing, it is widening a crack until it is big enough to climb through. Goals two and three soon followed.
Ancelotti’s team excels not because they are always the better team, but because they make the most of the minutes when they are. If Liverpool, Manchester City and Paris-Saint Germain found that out the hard way, Celtic were always likely to suffer the same fate.
Let us put Real Madrid into some context. They won as many Champions League matches last season as Celtic have since 2007. Their revenue is roughly nine times higher than Celtic’s.
Real have signed 64 different players for higher fees than Celtic’s record signing. It is not 2007 anymore, let alone 1967. Celtic are financial minnows.
But to an extent, both teams got what they came for. It strikes that to Ange Postecoglou, a football team has a choice: be happy with existing or try to truly live.
To sit back, dig in and hold out and win would be an achievement, but of what? Grim determination and defensive solidity – that is not what they came to see. That would merely be the victory of the underdog, which to Postecoglou would be a skeletal victory.
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Only by taking on an opponent by attacking them, by trying to expose their weaknesses and by exposing your own in the process, can you truly learn how good you are and in doing so place yourself amongst the elite.
Lose in those circumstances and you can seek out some glory in failure, particularly when there are other battles to come. Match your vaunted opponent and you allow yourself to breathe rarefied air.
There will be those who dismiss all that as romantic hogwash. Perhaps they are right; what is the reason for competition if not to win – is all else not merely window dressing?
But Celtic are not going to win the Champions League this season. That presents sticking to your theory of how your football team should play, to entertain its public, as just a potential strategy, but the only strategy that makes sense.
This was not a night on which Celtic felled a giant. But they celebrated the occasion of their own new start. For now, that is plenty enough. They stood and they sang at 0-0 and they did the same at 0-3. They have missed the Champions League here; it has missed them too.