Ralston: Neymar snub no big deal

memory of playing against the samba superstar.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he said of the incident. “I won’t dwell on that too much. If that is the case [that he refused to shake hands] and that is the way he wants to be, then fine.

“I don’t care. Like I said, everybody is different, so I won’t lose any sleep over it.

“It was a dream to be out there,” he said. “I’ve been a fan all my life and been a ball boy on these kind of nights.

“It was just incredible to be out there in front of those amazing fans. To experience that at the start was the best feeling in the world. Just hearing the Champions League music and the fans roaring is something I’ll never forget.

“It was a bit surreal. It’s a moment you just need to take in. Moments like that you never forget. They are the reasons you play football for. You always hope to get to this level.

“The manager let me know a week ago that I’d be playing. It allowed me to get it inside my head and prepare right. I didn’t feel fazed by it. This is where I want to play and at this level. I didn’t fear the likes of Neymar. I didn’t dwell on it too much.

“I just knew I had to play my normal game. I prepared for Neymar the way I’d prepare for any normal game. I did exactly the same routine. It’s just another man on the pitch you are playing against.

“I don’t put him on a pedestal. You just deal with it. These games test you mentally and I felt all the boys bounced back in the second half and we went for it.”

While PSG showed their class to record the biggest ever win on a European night at Celtic Park, Scott Sinclair said he felt Celtic were unrecognisable from their usual selves with the way they started the match.

“It was disappointing,” he said. “The way we started the game in that opening 20 minutes wasn’t like us.

“We were not as aggressive as normal and that was reflective of the game. We were loose on the ball and gave it away too many times.

“I wouldn’t say we gave them too much respect. But when they were attacking, I thought we could have got at them.”

THEY wanted to dine at the top table but instead there was a sense of still being on the outside looking in last night.

Celtic left the pitch on the back of a 5-0 defeat, their heaviest ever home loss in European competition and the club’s worst home defeat since 1895.

In many ways it was a night with their noses pressed to the glass as Celtic got a close up of what real money can buy.

There were just two minutes and 11 seconds played of this opening game in Group B last night when a decked Leigh Griffiths was punching the turf in frustration.

It was a simple portent for what was to come.

The heavy overhead Glasgow sky had dried up after an afternoon of incessant downpours but for Celtic it was an evening when little could have sheltered them from the manner in which their parade was rained on.

Brendan Rodgers had beseeched his side beforehand to make sure their visitors could feel the Celtic players breathing down their necks, but the problem was getting close enough to them in the first instance proved somewhat problematic.

The grace, speed and aggression of a side who played with pace and intelligence made for a night in which Celtic chased shadows.

Inevitable, perhaps, for a team who have spent obscene sums this summer on formalising their pretensions to go on and win the Champions League, the Parisians were so easy on the eye it seemed that there was a sense of the Celtic players wanting to stand back and applaud.

Certainly, there were times when the Hoops support were willing to accept they had seen a side ooze class; as Adrien Rabiot was replaced in the second period the PSG player was applauded as he walked off after an outstanding contribution to the performance.

There was recognition too for the impossible task handed to 18-year-old Anthony Ralston, Celtic’s right-back who was thrown in for just the fifth start of his senior Parkhead career.

To be fair to the wet-behindthe-ears youth academy graduate, the challenge of going up against the street-smart, waspish Brazilian playmaker always had a look of the no-wins about it.

And yet, although Ralston’s head went down in the immediate aftermath of Neymar’s 19th-minute opener, much of the sense of menace prior to that had come from Kylian Mbappe on the opposite side.

Not that the kid was starstruck; at one point as Neymar went down under very little – no, really – Ralston was quick to tell him to get to his feet although there was nothing ambiguous about the booking given to the teenager when he went through Thiago Motta in the second period of this game.

That Neymar would be front and centre of this game after a summer in which he dominated the transfer headlines seemed inevitable.

Not only did he net the first but it was he who then headed Marco Verratti’s cross across goal to tee up PSG’s second of the night.

It had been earmarked for Cavani but his failure to connect did not deter the world’s most expensive teenager who lashed a rasping effort high into Craig Gordon’s net.

FOR Celtic, it created a galling stat with Neymar at its core; the Brazilian has claimed five goals and seven assists against the Parkhead club in 11 meetings.

Little wonder that his booking in the closing stages of this game drew lusty applause from the home support.

That second goal was the end of the game as a contest, if ever there really had been one.

Celtic had created a couple of chances in the opening half although the often snapped chances and miscontrolled balls owed something to a sense of being spooked by the finesse of a PSG side who were entirely composed whenever they took possession.

Olivier Ntcham had an early opportunity to create something when he took control just outside of the PSG box but, with Patrick Roberts waiting in space on his right-hand side, the midfielder took aim with a relatively tame effort that went well wide of the target. By contrast, PSG were calm and clinical.

At one stage in the opening half and under pressure in their own box as Celtic tried to press and harry, PSG simply knocked the ball around as though they were going through their warmup, effortlessly playing their way out of any supposed hint of trouble.

Celtic made mistakes. Stuart Armstrong was culpable of giving the ball away and was hooked at the break, but he was not the only one guilty of gifting possession in the face of sheer pressure and the feeling of playing against an extra man. In the middle of the park Scott Brown and Ntcham laboured under the weight of trying to keep pace as they