Celtic’s 3-3 draw with Manchester City was the talk of European football.
The group phase of the Champions League has become in danger of becoming a slow, predictable bore with the bigger clubs cruising through in third gear as the minnows fight to avoid embarrassment and scrape for a Europa League spot.
It’s almost certain that Manchester City and Celtic will go their separate ways when the group phase ends in December but over 90 minutes the two clubs served up a treat for those fortunate enough to be watching.
From the moment Moussa Dembele opened the scoring in the third minute the fans and viewing millions were captivated by two teams determined to inflict damage on each other even though their own defending was far from satisfactory.
There was a cat and mouse feel to the match as Celtic snatched the lead only for City to strike back quickly in the cruelest of fashions.
Three times that sequence repeated itself with Celtic surviving a late onslaught to claim a point that might earn them a place in the Europa League.
Pep Guardiola knows his way around the European scene but after his first visit to the away dug out at Celtic Park he recognised what his side had achieved.
“It was an amazing effort to recover from that situation in this stadium against a team who had lost three of their last 24 games here (in Champions League group stages),” the City coach said.
“It was maybe a good lesson for us, how important it is to start well. It is not easy to recover one goal, imagine two, imagine three.
“It was mentally a shock at the start of each half, to concede a goal after two minutes. In the second half, aside from the first five or 10 minutes we played well, we created chances.
“They scored three and but didn’t make many more chances, we created enough chances to win the game.”