UEFA Cup Thursday April 8th 2004

Celtic 1

Villareal 1

0:1 Josico 6
1:1 Larsson 64

Att: 58,493

MIB: Kyros Vassaras (Gre)

Celtic
Marshall
Varga Balde McNamara
Agathe Lennon Petrov Pearson Thompson
Larsson Sutton
subs Miller for Pearson 79

Obviously someone at UEFA has taken the lyric 'Bring on the Spaniards by the score' a bit too literally, especially given that the winners of this tie could play Valencia.

On the basis that Villarreal are a good few places and points behind Barca in La Liga you would have thought that this game would have been slightly easier than the previous round. Mistake. Barca may have had more impressive individuals but they weren't as good at playing as a team.

Maybe Villareal just had a very good night. Celtic were certainly below par in the first half, so maybe it won't be quite so tough out there, but they were awfully good especially on the break and they got a goal. That really was a calamity - a nothing ball thrown in to the box, Bobo mistiming his challenge and Marshall just out of range. All of this only 6 minutes in and in those six minutes we had looked like we might pulverise them, the goal knocked us well and truly out of our stride.

The second half was more like it with everyone right up for it from the first whistle. Pearson finally came on to game after a first half where he looked every inch a Motherwell player and he, along with Agathe set up Larsson's goal. Pearson brought the ball in from the left and played a cute little pass to Agathe whose cross was nodded in by the King.

Of course Larsson had already had the ball in the net and that brings us on to the main talking point after the game - What have UEFA got against us? We must have done something powerful bad to them to get these kind of clowns holding the whistles and flags. Anyone who seriously believes Larsson deliberately tried to score with his arm needs a long shot of the liquid cosh and a wee rest in the soft room. So it was unintentional, but still worth penalising? If that's the case then Celtic should have had a penalty a few minutes later. The defender didn't mean to touch Varga's header with his arm, but it still took the ball away from goal and hence was not to our advantage.

Both decisions went against us, but they were just the most prominent cock ups. The whole game was littered with insane decisions. My own favourite was a foul on Larsson. The ball rolled to Sutton who had four defenders around him and the ref played advantage. Advantage to whom I hear you ask?

Celtic pressed for a winner and at the same time finally managed to stem the number of breakaways. WJ came on for Pearson, but we just couldn't force the ball in.

On the bright side we've travelled with this kind of task before, in last season's quarter final and semi final. We have a team with the European experience to cope with this kind of situation (there's a phrase we've not used in this mag before) and Villarreal, on paper, don't. If they are unsure of how to approach the game we can capitalise on that and with the spirit this team has you just never know.