Fortune favours the brave. With five minutes of this game to play Celtic were in precisely the position they had not wanted to be in, glancing anxiously at other Champions League scorelines and potentially heading to Villa Park needing some reward to continue involvement in the competition. An own goal altered the scene here entirely. If that winner was freakish, nobody could reasonably deny the hosts deserved it. Even Daizen Maeda’s subsequent red card could not halt wild celebration.
Brendan Rodgers returned to Celtic with a stated aim of making the Champions League knockout stage. He can tick that one off and, impressively, with a game to spare. Celtic will miss Maeda’s relentlessness against Aston Villa but the outcome for the Scottish champions next Wednesday is basically irrelevant. Celtic are worthy of their further opportunity against the elite of Europe, which Rodgers is entitled to relish.
“To have 12 points at this stage absolutely fantastic,” Rodgers said. “The idea is hopefully to be able to sustain this at this level. We have shown really good consistency.”
Young Boys arrived in Glasgow with such dismal European form that Celtic’s only apparent danger was complacency. The Swiss side had slipped to six defeats out of six. Things have not been much better on the home front; Young Boys are ninth in their domestic league. This all adds up to a third manager in the one season.
Kyogo Furuhashi had the ball in the Young Boys net inside 10 minutes, only to be flagged offside. Nicolas Kuhn did legally breach the Young Boys back line but dallied when the obvious option was to shoot. The Swiss opened the game with notable physicality but displayed a defensive fragility Celtic looked well equipped to exploit.
Young Boys did briefly serve notice of their threat. Arne Engels cheaply conceded possession, with Joel Monteiro striding forward before unleashing a shot at Kasper Schmeichel. The veteran goalkeeper, who has signed a new deal until the end of next season, batted the ball away as Monteiro’s teammates bemoaned the lack of a pass.
Celtic again thought they had scored shortly after the half‑hour. This time, the VAR intervened. Callum McGregor – the outstanding player all evening – was judged to have tripped Cheikh Niasse before feeding Furuhashi. The only surprise was that the match referee did not spot this in the first place. Furuhashi made a little bit of history before the break courtesy of a disallowed hat-trick. Two of the three were chalked off within 120 seconds of each other. The Japanese was offside when meeting Maeda’s cross from the left.
-Young Boys were desperately trying to scramble towards the interval. They should not have managed it, Engels instead hitting a woeful penalty into the arms of the gleeful Marvin Keller after Darian Males had hauled down Greg Taylor. Three non-goals and a missed penalty. The goal-less scenario at half-time felt wonderfully bonkers.
Auston Trusty struck the top of the Young Boys crossbar with a header from an Engels corner as Celtic began the second period in forceful fashion. Maeda had already tested Keller. A home breakthrough felt imminent until from a rare Young Boys counterattack, Schmeichel produced an acrobatic double save to deny Males.
Rodgers displayed his first frustration of the night as Taylor wasted the ball in a promising position. The left‑back was duly replaced by Alex Valle. The situations of Taylor and Valle are intriguing given Celtic’s moves to bring Kieran Tierney back from Arsenal. The mood music in Glasgow’s east end suggests that deal will soon be completed.
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With Rodgers’s next switch Adam Idah took the place of Furuhashi. This coincided with the hosts’ most ragged spell of the game. Young Boys, in turn, were rising in confidence. Reo Hatate, who had looked exhausted, set Idah loose with a wonderful pass. The striker’s shot rebounded first from Keller then on to the helpless Loris Benito and into the net. “That was the little bit of luck we didn’t have in the first half,” Rodgers said.
It was a winner befitting the weirdest of evenings. Maeda added to that after he clashed with Mohamed Ali Camara off the ball, the VAR sending Rohit Saggi to the monitor. A dismissal for a kick from Maeda was the upshot. “We will go there with no fear,” Rodgers said of Villa Park. Celtic have earned that right.
