Old jet-setter Lustig primed for marathon trip yet again
MIKAEL LUSTIG recently called Celtic the worst club a player could sign for if he ever fancied a proper summer holiday, such is his weary familiarity with the six game slog towards European qualification.
This is Lustig’s fifth season of trying to negotiate a perilous path towards the group stage of European club football and his second with Celtic to Kazakhstan.
Three years ago, Shakhter Karagandy ran out 2-0 winners over a Celtic side that failed to cope with an aerial bombardment from long throws and set-pieces. Thankfully for Celtic Karagandy failed to handle the obstacles set in their way on the return leg in Glasgow and Neil Lennon’s men prevailed to reach the Champions League.
As Brendan Rodgers plotted his route to a more positive result on the road, he jokingly accepting the nightmare negatives of the trek to Astana: ‘Over six-hours flight, a five-hour time difference, 35-degree heat, a plastic pitch with no water. Apart from that, no problem!’
In Lustig, Rodgers has an ally for embracing the nuances of challenges set by the modern UEFA football map and schedule. Lustig could script the survival guide for players as he also brings experience of travelling to Astana for international duty, being part of the Sweden squad that dug out a 1-0 World Cup qualifying victory in 2013 — a fortnight after his Celtic schlep — when Zlatan Ibrahimovic netted in the opening seconds.
‘The time difference is something you have to think about and we will try to do everything to cope with that,’ noted the 29-year-old. ‘You are better staying on your own time zone instead of trying to change. That’s what we did with the Swedish national team. You just stay up to 4am or 5am and have dinner in the middle of the night.
‘That’s the best way to do it. Teams like Germany have done that too and it works. It’s strange to be eating at that time but you don’t feel like you need to sleep, so it’s better to do that. But I think it will harder for them to come over here.
‘The kick-off time will be like at 1am for them and, hopefully, that gives us an advantage. The flight isn’t ideal as you never want to sit on a plane for six hours. But we will go over there on Monday and that’s good. It gives us some time to get used to it.’
With Karagandy’s smaller stadium not considered for use in 2013, Astana’s 30,000-seater venue was the scene — and a dry plastic pitch the surface — for Lustig and company.
Virgil van Dijk had a header cleared off the line, Kris Commons struck the crossbar that night and Lustig recalled: ‘When you play away from home in a difficult environment, you need to take opportunities.
‘They scored from a long throw-in and that made it difficult. The astroturf makes it tough and we have struggled on that surface before. But, hopefully, we’ve learned from that and will know how to get a good result on that hard surface.
‘These games never get easier do they? Look at Qarabag (Azerbaijan) last season. We felt we should beat them, on paper. But we had to get a last-minute goal at Celtic Park and then grind it out over there.’