Barcelona 6—Celtic 1.

Let me begin with a confession, whenever Celtic are playing Barcelona, whether home or away, and some ‘neutral’ asks me what the score will be I always say Barcelona will win 3-0. I assume that Barcelona are at least three times better than Celtic.  Yet I stuck a couple of quid on Georgios Samaras to score first and Celtic to win 1-0 (200/1).  For that to happen the footballing universe must turn slightly the wrong way and our goalie must have the game of his life. All those years ago when we got a draw at the Nou Camp  a  rookie keeper David Marshall did so and more recently Fraser Foster was so good he got called up into the England squad, even though he’s playing in a diddy league. Fraser Foster wasn’t to blame for any of the six goals. He’d a reasonable match. We could and perhaps should have been three goals down after seven minutes. Adam Matthew playing on the left was star-struck and his first significant involvement was to pass to a Barcelona player to run in on goal. That is not his job. That’s what Ambrose does time after time and particularly in these big games. We can get away with that in Scotland but on the big stage Neymar nutmegs him and scores the best goal of the night. He scored a hat-trick. In another cameo he nipped in front of Lustig to sweep in, what was for him, an easy first goal. His third was almost as good as his second, a bending shot from the edge of the box the curled into the corner of the net and left Forster with no chance. In between times Cetic players were harried and harrassed all over the park and tried to play the ball backwards instead of forward. We went with the pace of Borrigter on the right, the strength of Samarras on the right and the guile of  Pukki to hold the ball up front. Yes, we were having a laugh. The real worry was Barcelona were 5-0 up with half an hour left. We brought on Commons. He did what no other Celtic player had managed all night. He kept the ball. Our consolation goal, Samarras. He’s a consolation type of player. Our next big game is the qualifiers for the Champions League in April or May. We won’t be playing Barcelona. Pedro on the left, Sanchez on the right, Neymar in flight, thank the footballing gods for small mercies. Oh, yeh, the best player in the world wasn’t playing. It couldn’t have got any worse, could it? Pass marks—Forster and van Dilk no doubt they’ll be sold.   Brilliant Barcelona, any other night, a joy to watch.  Pique, Pedro and Rodriguez were the other scorers.