The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Celtic windfall for top flight clubs
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Qualification earns Premiership teams £365,000
Dundee and St Johnstone were celebrating last night as Celtic’s Champions League qualification earned both clubs a cash windfall.
The Dark Blues and Saints will, along with the other Ladbrokes Premiership teams, each receive a solidarity payment of £365,000 thanks to the Hoops’ 8-4 aggregate win over Astana despite yesterday’s 4-3 defeat.
The figure allocated to each side is up almost £100,000 on last season’s bounty after European football’s governing body Uefa opted for a more equitable distribution method.
The Parkhead men, meanwhile, are guaranteed no less than £26 million for reaching the group stages and that is before winning any points or selling any tickets for the Celtic Park games.
The overall solidarity payment is 8.5% (just under 200 million euros) of the estimated gross commercial income of the Champions League, which comes in at a massive 2.35 billion euros.
Brendan Rodgers’ side survived a brief scare last night as they saw a 5-0 first-leg lead threatened when Astana went 4-1 up.
However, late goals from Olivier Ntcham and Leigh Griffiths confirmed Celtic would be in tomorrow’s draw for the group stages.
Celtic progressed into the Champions League as expected with an 8-4 aggregate win over Astana last night, but they were made to sweat in their 4-3 secondleg defeat in Kazakhstan.
The Hoops’ progress was never in serious doubt following their 5-0 thrashing of the Kazakhstan champions at Parkhead last week, but there were some nervy moments for the Scottish champions as they slipped to a first defeat of the season in a pulsating encounter at the Astana Arena.
Celtic’s 19-year-old defender Kristoffer Ajer, in for injured Jozo Simunovic, deflected a shot from defender Dmitri Shomko past goalkeeper Craig Gordon in the 26th minute to give the Kazakh side the merest glimmer of hope, quashed, it appeared, eight minutes later when Hoops attacker Scott Sinclair curled in the equaliser.
Two goals in a minute at the start of the second-half from attackers Serikzhan Muzhikov and Patrick Twumasi brought the home side back to life and, when Ghanaian Twumasi grabbed his second, the visitors were on the ropes.
However, late goals from Olivier Ntcham and Leigh Griffiths confirmed Brendan Rodgers’ side’s passage into the group stages for the second successive season.
The Northern Irishman was again forced to start with a makeshift central defence due to injuries.
Nir Bitton, essentially a midfielder, had passed a fitness test on an ankle injury and the midfielder was paired with Ajer, who had played in the 2-0 win over Kilmarnock at Rugby Park on Saturday.
The only other Celtic change from the first leg saw midfielder Callum McGregor take over from Tom Rogic, who started on the bench.
The home side got in front slightly against the run of play when Shomko edged towards the Celtic box and drilled in a left-footed drive which came off Ajer leaving Gordon with no chance.
Astana’s supporters were energised with optimism but that should have been extinguished seconds later when Sinclair burst through the fragile Kazakh defence only to blast his shot against home goalkeeper Nenad Eric.
However, the former Manchester City and Aston Villa player was so much more accurate in the 33rd minute when he curled the ball high past the Astana stopper and into the far corner before running to take the acclaim of the couple of hundred Hoops fans who had made the long journey east.
Muzhikov’s early second-half goal came after a mistake by Scott Brown in giving away possession then heading a cross on to the Astana player who poked the ball in from close range.
A minute later the unmarked Twumasi headed a Shomko cross past Gordon and suddenly some hope was restored although four more goals were required.
Rodgers replaced McGregor with Rogic and Forrest with teenage defender Anthony Ralston before Stuart Armstrong came on for Sinclair.
Griffiths missed a great chance when he controlled a Tierney cross on his chest before thrashing the ball over the bar and looked further aghast seconds later as Twumasi raced in from the right and squeezed the ball past Gordon from a tight angle to make it 4-1.
Eric then made a fine save from Griffiths’ free-kick just before Gordon prevented Twumasi and Muzhikov adding further to Astana’s lead.
Twumasi then blazed over the bar from 10 yards with the Hoops defence reeling but, on an 80th-minute break, Ntcham steered a shot past Eric which allowed everyone of a green and white persuasion to breathe more comfortably.
Griffiths, with two minutes of regulation time remaining, then scored Celtic’s third with a fine angled-drive.
Celtic: Gordon, Lustig, Bitton, Ajer, Tierney, Forrest (Ralston 56), Ntcham, Brown, McGregor (Rogic 57), Sinclair (Armstrong 65), Griffiths. Subs not used: De Vries, Gamboa, Hayes, Miller.