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Brown recalls the European trip that can’t be repeated

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Scott Brown doesn’t need to think back too far for motivation ahead of facing FK Sarajevo tonight.

Eleven months ago Celtic travelled to Greece to face AEK Athens with just a 1-1 draw from the home leg with the hoops in a state of turmoil.

John McGinn had completed his transfer from Hibs to Aston Villa, Brendan Rodgers had expressed his unhappiness with the dearth of transfer business while Dedryck Boyata had decided against turning up.

Between the two matches against the Greek champions Celtic had lost 1-0 at Tynecastle, Stuart Armstrong and Paddy Roberts hadn’t been replaced while Moussa Dembele and Odsonne Edouard battled injury concerns.

It was the perfect background for failure with Celtic losing 2-1 to create the Greek tragedy headlines that followed with further discord with the manager and Dembele on his way to Lyon before the month was out.

What happened in Athens last year was hard to take for everyone,” Brown told The Scotsman. “We thought we were the better team over two legs but we just couldn’t get the ball in the back of the net.

We played some great ?football and were just unlucky with a few injuries as well, a couple of the lads couldn’t quite make the game. It is always on the back of your mind. We just couldn’t get it over the line.

That’s the things that drive us on to try to get into the Champions League. It’s huge for me. You want to play against the best players and best clubs in the world.

That’s why I signed for ?Celtic, to play in these kinds of competitions. It’s huge in terms of money, sponsorship and putting ourselves out there for people to see what a top-quality team and club we are, but we need to make sure we are there in the first place.

A lot of the players come to Celtic because they see ?Champions League nights like when we were playing Man City and PSG, and we want that atmosphere again at ?Celtic Park. We want to be in the Champions League and we think this club deserves to be in the Champions League, so we need to make sure we make the club proud.”

Chrustopher Jullien is expected to make his debut in central defence but Luca Connell and Boli Mbombo may have to settle for a place on the bench.

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