Ronny Deila, the Celtic manager, will attempt to find out why his players buckled under the pressure of trying to reach the Champions League proper. The Scottish champions were yesterday coming to terms with blowing a potential £20 million-plus Uefa windfall after the lame display in Malmö which resulted in a 4-3 aggregate defeat to the Swedes.
Celtic will be in tomorrow’s draw for the Europa League group stage and they are provisionally in pot two and could avoid Liverpool, Lazio and Fiorentina and be drawn with likely pot one opponents such as Borussia Dortmund, Tottenham Hotspur, Schalke, Napoli, Ajax, Villarreal and Athletic Bilbao.
Celtic will receive around £2.8 million for losing the Champions League play-off round plus £180,000 “compensation” as a domestic champion that failed to reach the group stage. There is a further £1.7 million Europa League participation fee, a market pool fee of around £3 million, plus £260,000 for any win in the group and £87,000 for any draw. More money will be generated if Virgil van Dijk completes an expected £10.5 million move to Southampton within days.
Deila has accepted his share of responsibility for the collapse against Malmö, who had been 2-0 down after ten minutes of the first leg in Glasgow only to then score three goals from corners over the two legs. Still, he was startled by his players’ apparent stage fright in the Swedbank Stadion on Tuesday night and their inhibited, meek defeat. He suggested that weeks of build-up to the games had played on his players’ minds, with disastrous consequences.
“I ask myself what can be done to make sure we are not as stressed as the team was on Tuesday,” Deila said. “Everybody knows how much this game meant but it’s not about wanting it, it’s about wanting it too much. The build-up to these games goes on for such a long time. It’s not only the last week, it has been going on for the last six months.
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“Does it annoy me that no matter what we do domestically, it’s all about the Champions League? That’s OK but it’s something we have to deal with. In Malmö, we didn’t handle that very well. It is another year before we can get back into it. That’s why we must learn.”
Celtic appointed Jim McGuinness, a sports psychologist, to work with the first team last October and Deila also has input from other members of his backroom staff, who work on motivation and confidence. “It’s important,” Deila said. “But you learn everything through experience. The best players will learn. This is a very disappointed group but it’s better than we did last year. We made the play-offs this time [last season they were eliminated by Legia Warsaw in the third qualifying round only to be given a reprieve when the Poles broke a competition rule].
“We weren’t good enough to get into the Champions League. I think we have progressed since a year ago but in Sweden it looked like we were caught up by the importance of the game.” He agreed with Scott Brown’s remark that he had felt “ashamed”. “I think we all have that feeling. I completely agree,” he said.