Travelling to Germany with his team having won nine games on the bounce in all competitions, Brendan Rodgers was understandably bullish ahead of Celtic’s Bigger Cup match against Borussia Dortmund. His team had conceded only four goals all season while scoring 33, with just under half that tally coming in their past three outings, against St Johnstone, Falkirk and Slovan Bratislava. Having seen off such exalted opposition with a minimum of fuss, it was small wonder that Rodgers talked up the new “mindset, belief and experience” that he felt would help his side as Celtic attempted to secure their first competitive victory on German soil in 15 attempts.
“I think we have also added some players that give us something in key areas of the pitch that you need,” beamed Brendan, whose subsequent approach to the Dortmund match might have sufficed for a home cup tie against Bonnyrigg Rose or East Fife, but could scarcely have proved more naive when taking on last season’s Bigger Cup runners up at the Westfalenstadion. What exactly Brendan hoped his players might give in key areas of the pitch remains unclear, but it almost certainly wasn’t repeated possession of the ball to their hosts. The upshot? Dortmund duly spanked seven goals past them on yet another chastening European night on the road for Celtic. While Big Paper’s fitba correspondent described the match as being “akin to a grand master playing an orangutan at chess”, Football Daily would politely suggest such a comparison does a grave disservice to our famously intelligent hominid chums, one of whose number had an opening gambit named after her on the back of advice she somehow imparted to the Polish grand master Savielly Tartakower before a match he played in New York in 1924.
Celtic had surfed into Dortmund on a wave of misplaced confidence they’d taken from the beatdown to which they’d subjected Slovan Bratislava in the previous round of fixtures. Unsurprisingly, the Slovak champions were the victims of another drubbing at the hands of Manchester City. Between qualifiers and group games, Bratislava have already played 10 matches in this season’s Bigger Cup, with their opening win over North Macedonian champions, Struga, in July now a distant memory. Given Bigger Cup’s new format and 36-team table, regular shellackings were always going to be on the cards, not least when you consider that Bratislava’s tormentor-in-chief, Jérémy Doku, retails at more than twice the cost of the entire home squad.
While Barcelona and Inter also piled the hurt on comparative minnows last night, arguably the most intriguing of the Bigger Cup thrashings was the one visited upon RB Salzburg by Brest. As hammerings go, this was easily the most fascinating game of an otherwise fairly unremarkable evening of action, in so far as the team that was battered for long periods somehow managed to score four goals against the run of play and without reply. The team with the lowest Uefa ranking in this season’s Bigger Cup, Brest, currently sit joint-top of the 36-team group table like a diminutive Napoleonic colossus. Speaking of whom, we’ve got a good story about the famous French emperor and his old barge, which currently resides in the Brest Naval Museum. But seeing as we’ve already spoiled you with an unexpected yarn about a great ape’s contribution to the tactical history of chess, that anecdotal gold will have to wait for another day.
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You’ve got to back yourself. Photograph: Jean Catuffe/DPPI/Shutterstock
