Following a thrilling 5-1 victory over Slovan Bratislava on Wednesday night in the Champions League, Celtic supporters are still relishing the moment.
It was a full team effort, with five different goal scorers. Liam Scales, Kyogo Furuhashi, Arne Engels, Daizen Maeda and Adam Idah all combined to secure Celtic’s biggest margin of victory ever in the group stage of the tournament.
Off the ball, Celtic pressed hard and aggressively, causing mistakes from the Slovakian champions. When in control, the home team regularly took advantage of the visitors, producing a ton of opportunities.
Despite it being a team effort, there were standouts and two very outstanding Bhoys performances have been picked in an all-star squad of the week.
Liam Scales and Arne Engels ranked alongside global superstars
Stat-trackers After analyzing data from all 18 games played in the first week of the league, Sofascore focused on two Celtic players: Liam Scales and Arne Engels.
With an 8.1 rating, Scales plays defense with Nico Schlotterbeck, who will soon face Borussia Dortmund, and Josko Gvardiol, a standout for Manchester City.
With a 9.2 match rating, Engels was second only to Harry Kane, who scored freely and contributed to Dinamo Zagreb’s Tuesday night demolition.
Scales was declared the man of the match and given a special UEFA trophy as compensation for his efforts.
It is only fitting that Engels get acknowledgement as well. His robust, all-around performance was a promising start for the new recruit. It appears as though Celtic have another player with a lot of promise who has the potential to become a very good player.
Celtic take big confidence into Champions League gauntlet
In this new league phase, there are seven games left, so there’s still a lot of work to be done to accumulate the points needed to get into the top 24 play-offs.
Everyone is aware that the Bhoys have more challenging tests in store, not the least of which are their impending away games against Dortmund and Atalanta.
What the opening week has given Celtic, beyond three points, is a lot of confidence. The players know they can now attack this competition with no fear – they’ve shown they can play with swagger and belief in Europe.
There’s genuine excitement around the club and we all want to see that translate into more big European results.
READ MORE ON:https://sportip.co.uk/