DONATI INSISTS PLAY-OFFS ECLIPSE BIG EURO NIGHTS
MASSIMO DONATI’S most high-profile moment on Scottish soil came towards the end of a rainlashed Champions League night ten years ago. The Italian midfielder’s dramatic 92nd-minute winner against Shakhtar Donetsk in November 2007 effectively fired Gordon Strachan’s Celtic into the last 16 of European football’s premier competition. A month earlier, Donati had starred as Celtic claimed the scalp of the reigning European champions — and his former club — AC Milan, thanks to goals from Stephen McManus and Scott McDonald. The former £10million signing by the San Siro side was certainly no stranger to the intense demands of Serie A after also enjoying spells at the likes of Atalanta, Parma, Sampdoria and Bari. Yet for Donati the past is, for the moment at least, an irrelevance. Now, all the 36-year-old is focused on is Hamilton and the first leg of their Premiership Play-off final against Dundee United at Tannadice tonight. ‘I have played in some really big games in Italy and in the Champions League,’ he said. ‘But the two biggest games in my career are coming up now with Hamilton. ‘If you don’t do well in the play-offs, you don’t get a second chance. So these matches are so important for me, for the team and the whole Hamilton family. And we will be ready. ‘I have two more years left on my contract and I want to be playing my football in the Premiership. So do all the guys at Hamilton.’ After twice suffering the pain of demotion in his homeland, Donati has no intention of recording an unwanted hat-trick with Martin Canning’s Accies. At previous clubs, he watched as relegation meant cutbacks and redundancies but vowed Hamilton can handle the pressure of knowing play-off disappointment could equate to lost jobs. ‘I know how painful relegation can be and I don’t want that to happen again,’ he said. ‘I have been relegated twice — with Bari and Palermo — and it did not feel good. ‘Jobs could be on the line? I am aware of that. After relegation, a lot of things change at a club.’