UEFA Europa League Play Off round - Full Time Report: Celtic vs FC Utrecht
The Dutch side traveled to Glasgow to face Celtic at the Parkhead for the first leg tie. This was right after Niel Lennon's men crashed out in the Champions League qualifiers to Braga.
Celtic were comfortably beaten by a score line of three goals to nil, they managed to bounce back in the second leg by winning it two goals to one, but that wasn't enough to see them staying put in the Champions League. The team managed to get demoted to the Europa League and is now looking to bounce back from their earlier humiliation.
The favourties going into the game, were easily the home team, Celtic. Their Dutch opponents, Utrecht, were worthy advisories but didn't look like the team that would see Celtic crashing out of the Europa League. Celtic were the early favourties going into the game for obvious reasons and they had luck on their side as well, Paddy McCourt was fit for the match and new signing Daniel Majstorovic was also looking to make the team.
As the teams took the field their was a sense of intensity in the air. The fans knew that they were going to witness some of the best football ever played on the ground. Celtic looked like the team that had everything going for it though. As the match kicked off Celtic muscled their way onto possession of the ball and started knocking it back and forth creating wonderful openings and spaces for the players to run into.
Chances were being created left and right by the home team. On the fourteenth minute mark, Maloney missed the first real chance for Celtic from nearly two yards out. It was a great save but the player could have had no excuses for missing from there.
Four minutes after the miss, Juarez finally managed to see the ball crash against the back of the net. He received a great ball down the middle and finished with ease. Celtic started to build on that goal and from there on it seemed like the match might as well have been called off.
On the thirty third minute mark, Saaras made it two nil for the home team. Cha Du-Ri whipped in a delightful ball which Samras chested then slotted home with ease. Celtic looked to be bringing a riot to town and the fan's were loving every second of it. Near the end of the first half Utrecht seemed to have been contained in their own half.
The away team couldn't do much on the night so far, against a Celtic that was performing so brilliantly. At the end of the first half, the score was two nil in favor of the home team. However all hope was not lost for Utrecht. Soon after the half time break drew to a close and the second half began.
The pace of the game was still being controlled by Celtic who easily looked like the better team on the night. Celtic seemed to want to go all out in the game, they were attacking from all angles and rushing into challenges, it felt like the team wasn't satisfied with the lead that they had and wanted to score atleast one more time.
Samras was shown a yellow card for a silly tackle, but the player acted even sillier by refusing to accept his yellow card, the striker was lucky that the referee was in a forgiving mood and didn't show him a red for his actions. The second half was living up to the same hype as the first, but there were no real chances being created this time around.
Celtic were still dominating but just couldn't seem to get it right in front of the goal for some reason. There was some bad news near the end of the game as Lensky looked to have pulled his hamstring. The player seemed to be in quite a lot of pain and couldn't carry on for the rest of the game and had to be subbed eventually.
The game ended with the score line staying two goals to nil in Celtic's favor. However the home team didn't seem as excited as they should have, this was because they knew they could have done so much better on the night.
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