8 GAMES IN 8 WEEKS
Scottish title winners will face a nightmare schedule to take their place in Champions League next season
SCOTLAND’S champions will face a brutal EIGHT games in EIGHT weeks if they want to join Europe’s big guns next season.
Record Sport can reveal the limb-numbing itinerary which awaits the winners of Scotland’s Premiership in the Champions League qualification rounds in season 2018-19.
Celtic are red-hot favourites to clinch their seventh title on the spin and
Brendan Rodgers’ men already knew they’d be facing an extra qualifying round next term – taking it up to four – after a new format was approved by UEFA, guaranteeing group places to the four highest-ranked domestic leagues of Spain, Germany, England and Italy.
But, with the World Cup next summer affecting club schedules, UEFA are ready to cram in the qualifiers.
Russia 2018 will end on July 15 and that has led to a later start to the club competitions.
The preliminary round for the Champions League qualifying starts on June 26, but this will only involve teams from Gibraltar, Andorra, San Marino and Kosovo.
This is also the same week where the Europa League qualifiers will start for the Scottish contingent.
Having won the last six titles, Celtic are clear favourites to be the Scottish representatives in the main tournament and that club will enter the fray on July 10-11.
From there, there is no scheduled break or gap week with potential August international-match dates binned.
Second legs will be played on July 17-18 before the second qualifying round is staged on July 24-25 and July 31-August 1.
UEFA have pencilled the third qualifying round into August 7-8 and August 14-15 before the play-off is staged over August 21-22 and August 28-29.
That would mean eight games in eight successive midweeks in a sapping spell.
UEFA are aware that clubs can’t be punished for having players at the World Cup and the move is intended to limit as much disruption and damage as possible.
Alterations will help the availability of the likes of Celtic’s Mikael Lustig, who will go to Russia with Sweden after they sank Italy in the qualifying play-off.
The full-back faced the potential of missing half of the qualifiers had dates from past years stayed in place.
However, Lustig would now be free for all matches if his country makes an early exit from the World Cup, although club manager Rodgers would likely insist on a rest period for one of his defensive lynchpins.
Lustig, meanwhile, reckons it was the Italian fans who gave his troops the motivation they needed to qualify by booing their national anthem.
The Celtic star was angry pre-match at the heckling and said: “When it’s the national anthem of a country, you must show respect and they did not.
“I was thoroughly p***ed off by it. Maybe it did us good because we were angry.
“It was a brilliant feeling when the ref blew for full time. But there’s no time for me to celebrate. We (Celtic) are away at Ross County on Saturday.”