The Euro pressure pot is now boiling up for Deila
RONNY Deila insists he i s under more pressure to deliver Champions league f ootball t han any other manager in europe. He may have a point.
The SPFl Premiership may not be the sternest test on planet football.
But cast an eye around the Continent at large and you won’t find another title-winning coach in danger of losing his job before a domestic ball is kicked. No other coach for whom winning the league is taken for granted.
This is now the established fate of the manager of Celtic. Deila and Neil lennon before him.
Most managers land up on their ear if they fail to deliver at the end of the season. Not the beginning.
Celtic’s disciplined 0-0 draw with Qarabag in azerbaijan on Wednesday has removed any immediate threat to Deila.
But it’s not done yet. a feisty Norwegian grudge match with age Hareide’s Malmo is next up and Deila i s once again walking a tightrope. Still striving to reach the pot of gold at the other side.
Defeat to the Swedish champions — with Parkhead reject Jo inge Berget in their ranks — would be perceived as a desperate outcome.
Deila’s problem is simple. For Scotland’s champions, the £16million on offer for qualification is the difference between profit and loss. The difference between a vibrant, upbeat f ootball cl ub and a nuclear winter.
Victory over Qarabag means european football until Christmas at least.
But no one can fool themselves the europa league would be any kind of consolation for losing to Malmo.
in football terms, it may be Celtic’s best chance of european football after the festive season.
But the europa league is a second- rate competition. The plain- Jane bridesmaid i n the magnolia dress.
The prize money has been bumped up to £4m f or group qualifiers, and yet, outwith the competing clubs, interest levels are rock bottom. Baku, then, was a big night for Deila. a safety net.
ajax coach Ronald de Boer is battling to keep his job after losing to Rapid Vienna i n the third qualifying round on Tuesday.
With the fiasco of legia Warsaw and Maribor still fresh in Celtic’s memory, Deila might have found himself in a similar bind. The Ronny Roar would have been silenced.
By and large, the manager’s stock has risen significantly in the eyes of the club’s supporters.
Yet these things are never set in stone; not in Glasgow. a hero can find himself a zero in the blink of an eye.
if Celtic lose a two-leg play-off to the Swedish champions, a composed, professional job in azerbaijan will swiftly become an irrelevance.
it’s too simplistic to suggest Deila would be sacked. There i s no evidence for that.
The Celtic board have invested a substantial amount of faith and money in their manager. He is a project, not an essay.
Deila is reshaping the culture of the club via new players, a new backroom team and nutrition and sports- science experts from his homeland. even the lucrative pre-season trips to australia and america have been binned.
But to maintain momentum and progress, Deila must find a way to get Celtic past Malmo. He must lead his disciples to the promised land.
That prospect looks more likely after t hei r perf or mance in azerbaijan.
Of the 11 players who lined up in Baku, only Mikael lustig, Virgil van Dijk and Stefan Johansen started last year’s wretched 4-1 defeat to legia Warsaw. Berget was one of them — and now he is on the other side. Deila says the club has improved in every department — on and off the field.
a decade ago, a Celtic charter flight for european games comprised players, management team, a handful of directors, a physio, a masseur, the kitman the PR officer and the hacks at the back of the plane.
These days, the middle section of a 737 is populated by a raft of new faces from Norway.
Head of performance Bard Ove Homstol has been joined by his wife Grete, an injury-prevention specialist. First-team nutritionist Kenn Hallstensen has also been brought in.
amongst the backroom old guard, their arrival has not been universally welcomed. Noses have been shunted out of joint. and as Deila’s stock rises, the biggest Norse invasion since the longboats landed at largs is likely to continue.
But somewhere along the line directors will demand a return for all these new faces. For all this investment.
For Deila, beating Malmo and taking a place in the group stages of the Champions league is an imperative. Nothing less will do.