Celtic’s u-20 side won’t be holding back against Benfica tonight in the Al Ain Youth Competition.
A draw will be enough to take Celtic into Thursday’s semi-finals as group winners while Benfica must win to have a chance of progressing.
Jamie Lindsay’s second half strike gave Celtic a 1-0 win over Dinamo Zagreb on Sunday with Stevie Frail looking for the same again against Benfica.
“We don’t go into any match looking for a draw, that’s dangerous at any level,” the hoops coach said. “We know what we need to do and will go out to win the match.
“Benfica need to win, a draw doesn’t suit them, they need to come at us and we’re ready for that.
“We’ll approach the match in the same way as we did against Zagreb and that’s to try and win it.
“We watched Benfica against Zagreb on Saturday and they are a good, well organised side with a bit of flair as well but we need to build on the confidence from our win over Zagreb.
“It’s a high standard competition and we know that we have to be at our best. Benfica will have something to prove and will feel that they can beat us.”
Frail added: “We gave the players some free time on Monday but they did some work in the pool, had a recovery session in the morning and trained again at night.
“The facilities are first class, everyone has worked hard and now we’re looking for another good performance and result against Benfica.”
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Great result for the U 20s in beating Benfica 1-0 to setup a semi-final against the host club.
Meanwhile the U17s did well to pull level after losing an early goal to hosts Spartak Moscow and finish 1-1. Watched a fair bit of the game and the Russian side looked very sharp / lively so a good result indeed. Going to be tough going playing for 60 mins on successive days especially as we tend to play a high tempo pressing game. Barcelona next on the agenda tomorrow (They beat Spurs 1-0 reversing their defeat in the Ajax tourney)