The second qualifying round of the Champions League claimed two big name casualties as Maribor and Ludogorets were knocked out.
Both clubs featured in the group stage of last season’s competition but with a week left in July they are left without any type of European competition for the remainder of the season.
More importantly as far as Celtic are concerned, if the hoops can get past Quarabag in the third qualifying round, Maribor and Ludogorets were potential unseeded play-off opponents.
With those sides removed HJK Helsinki and Albanian champions KF Skenderbeu become the highest ranked possible opponents on the large assumption that they come through the third qualifying round.
After knocking out the highly ranked duo Astrana (who beat Maribor 3-2 on aggregate) and Milsami (who came through on a 3-1 aggregate against Ludogorets) will be confident of negotiating their way through the third qualifying round to ensure at least a place in the Europa League group stage.
Before he can even think about the qualifying round Celtic will have to see off the challenge of Quarabag who emerged from Montenegro with a 1-0 aggregate win over Rudar Pljevla.
Just before the hour mark Brazilian midfielder Reynaldo scored the only goal of the game with coach Guran Gurbanov using three Brazilians in last night’s match.
If the seedings work out Celtic’s potential play-off opponents will come from APOEL (Cyprus), BATE (Belarus), Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia), HJK Helsinki (Finland) or KF Skenderbeu (Albania) but as far as Ronny Deila is concerned seeing off Guarabag is all that matters.
A agree with RD, all that matters is getting thru to the next round. Well done to the bhoys last night.
HH
It’s Qarabag not Garabag.
Well we are through, not without a scare and still looking a bit sleepy, but we definitely have to massively up our game against Qarabag or they will rip us apart
So we need to play a playoff after the 3rd round???
Nah, the 3rd round is the play-off round I’m sure.
To reach the group stage Celtic must get through second and third qualifying rounds then the play-off.
As long as the Tic go through to the qualifiers proper that is all I care about. God Bless the Celts.
Big name casualties? I wouldn’t say so