Missing out on the Nou Camp wasn’t great. I’d worked all my career to have a go at playing somewhere like that
Gordon is ready for what lies ahead and is hopeful Celtic can lay a glove on PSG
THE 2016 opening night of the Champions League should have represented a new pinnacle in Craig Gordon’s career. Instead the goalkeeper spent the night brooding on the bench as Celtic conceded seven goals to Barcelona.
A game at the Nou Camp had always hovered around the top of Gordon’s wish-list and the chance to make his first appearance in Europe’s top club tournament at one of the game’s most storied venues held special significance given the injury trouble that had brought him to the brink of retirement just a few years previously.
The idea of Gordon not starting this year’s Group B curtain-raiser against Paris Saint-Germain may be unthinkable but what happened 12 months ago remains a rare blot on Brendan Rodgers’ timeline as Celtic manager.
Rodgers’ logic holds that Gordon benefited from a spell out in order to work on his distribution but the choice of replacement was emphatically ill-judged. Dorus de Vries may have served his coach well in a previous life at Swansea but conceded in each of his five games in the Celtic team and put up flimsy resistance as Lionel Messi & Co rained shots on his goal last September.
Gordon was reinstated for the next Champions League game against Manchester City and, although the 34-year-old agrees he is now calmer and more comfortable with the ball at his feet, he remains wounded by the episode.
‘It didn’t feel great,’ he recalls. ‘I’d worked all my career to get somewhere like that and try to have a go at it.
‘Dorus got in for the Aberdeen game and played a couple of league games leading up to Barcelona, so I was aware beforehand. That didn’t make it any easier to take, but you get on with it and do the best you can.
‘It was a blow but I’ve had plenty of others, with injuries and things. It wasn’t too bad — I wasn’t out for another two years. It was one game.
‘I had put it into context quite quickly and try to get myself back in the team.’
If it could reasonably be argued that Gordon could have brushed up on his kicking while remaining in situ, he retains a solid working relationship with his manager and revelled in the opportunity to play a full part in the team’s clean sweep of last season’s domestic honours.
Even so, he could easily have gone in January, when Chelsea boss Antonio Conte placed him at the top of his list of targets for a back-up to Thibaut Courtois at Stamford Bridge. Gordon was keen to hear what Chelsea had to say and asked Celtic to prove their loyalty when negotiating an improved contract to stay.
Firmly re-established as first choice for both his club and Scotland, Gordon is now in a good place and feeling quietly optimistic about what Celtic could achieve in Europe this season.
PSG’s world transfer-record breaking — and financial fair play taunting — window of recruitment has emphasised the scale of the challenge facing the Scottish champions. In Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar, Rodgers felt Celtic were facing the best forward line of all time in Barcelona yet Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Edinson Cavani represents something even more expensive if not dangerous.
The influx of heavy Qatari investment represents an attempt to make PSG a truly elite club but they are joined in this glamorous section by one of the game’s heavyweights Bayern Munich.
By all normal measures, Celtic should be aiming to prevail in a fight with Anderlecht for third and, having secured draws against Borussia Monchengladbach and Manchester City (twice) last term, Rodgers has stated that his team should be better equipped this season.
‘We want to give a good account of ourselves and try to get some more points,’ insists Gordon. ‘We’ll try to express ourselves but we’re playing against good teams.
‘We’re going to have to defend well and counter-attack at times, but we have players that can do that. We’ve got good pace in the team and we have guys who can finish. It’s not a bad thing for us, we can play that style and it’s not something we get to do very often in Scotland.
‘We go into these games with a chance to play in a slightly different way and it’s
something that could suit us.
‘There’s a little bit less pressure because we’ll be expected to be beaten by these teams but, from inside the dressing-room, we know we have a chance to get something from these games — regardless if it’s home or away.
‘If we can play our style and play as well as we can, we’ll give these teams a game.’
While Celtic go into the opener with a more rounded goalkeeper, Rodgers’ defence looks susceptible.
The return to fitness and form of Dedryck Boyata and Jozo Simunovic gave Celtic a strong central defensive partnership in the second half of last season, but Tuesday will come too quickly for the former as he steps up his recovery from a hamstring injury sustained in pre-season. Gordon hopes to see Boyata return soon.
‘Dedryck and Jozo are really good defenders who deserve their chance at this level,’ he continued. ‘They’re two good, young centre-halves who are vital to the team and the way we play.
‘If we can get them both fit and together, it’s a good partnership — as they showed at the end of last season.
‘Dedryck has a great attitude. He works so hard. He’s good in the air and he’s quick. He can score goals too, he’s a real threat at set-pieces for us.
‘We would like him back as soon as possible, get him fit and in the team.’
In Barcelona, Rodgers deployed a back five with Cristian Gamboa starting at right-back and Kolo Toure in the middle alongside Mikael Lustig and Erik Sviatchenko and Kieran Tierney at left-back.
With both Boyata and Sviatchenko out, there is a big question mark over who will start alongside Simunovic.
It could be Lustig but that would mean
Neymar or Mbappe being handed a run at Gamboa or youngster Anthony Ralston Neymar claimed a goal and four assists for Barca in that seven-goal mauling a year ago and Gordon watched on in grudging admiration.
‘I’ve seen Neymar score plenty of goals — he’s a great player,’ he continued. ‘We will watch videos to see how we’re going to go about it defensively. How we’re going to shape up.
‘We always try to get that little edge in terms of analysis but when you’re out there it’s 11 v 11 and you don’t always know what everyone is going to do.
‘It’s great to think you’re going to test ourselves against the talent they’ve got but I think we’ll be quietly confident that we can do something against them.
‘We’re not daunted, we just want to go and play. We’ve been together longer, we’ve worked at t the style of play and the formations the manager wants us to play. From that point of view, tactically, we’re better than we were at the start of the last campaign.’
It’s great to test ourselves against the talent of these teams but we will be quietly confident of getting something