Although Celtic may have been beaten 3-0 by the current champions of Europe, Ange Postecoglou’s team can take a lot of pride from their performance.
The Hoops had a right good go at Ancelotti’s team creating plenty of chances throughout the 90 minutes of football.
There was lots of great performances in green and white jerseys with Japanese midfielder Reo Hatate showing his class at times. As a collective the whole Celtic team were outstanding in the first-half.
He has a great football brain and can pick out a difficult pass without too much hesitation and find the player he is searching for.
Tuesday evening may well have been the toughest match he had played in during his career as he went up against a midfield trio of Luka Modrić, Toni Kroos and Aurélien Tchouaméni who have been dubbed by their Italian coach as the ‘Bermuda Triangle’.
3-0 may not have been a fair reflection on the game with Celtic having plenty of chances but at that level it is crucial that you take them when given to you or you will inevitably get punished.
It’s now about moving on from the game and learning from it:
“I cannot express with my words what that experience was like,” said Reo Hatate speaking to the Daily Record.
“I tried a lot of things, and showed a little of what I can do, and I learned a lot of things from playing against players like that. I have to take as much out of this experience as I can and use that to improve as a player.
“Well, first of all I enjoyed it a lot.
“I felt excitement of course and I felt nervous, there were a lot of feelings at the start of the game. But I enjoyed the match a lot, and I feel like I am improving as a player.”
One man who will be helping Hatate’s development is captain Callum McGregor who had a brilliant performance on Tuesday night. He’s a player who belongs at that level.
Hatate’s story was well documented going into the game about a player who never thought he would play at this level.
Like his other Celtic teammates they didn’t look out of place for majority of the game with a tough test against Shakhtar Donetsk coming up next week.
As a team we will grow from this years CL games as group we all will win and lose together but as a group we have years together to make sure we will come back and we will be stronger first thing we need to do is make sure we do come back to the the top table year after year after year and show the world we are a top team, it takes time and we got to be in it to get better let us do this Celtic.