Kairat Almaty have been dealt a fresh setback just hours before their Champions League play-off second leg against Celtic, with winger Edmilson Filho ruled out through injury.
The Brazilian forward who started in last week’s goalless first leg at Celtic Park, has picked up an injury in training and will miss tonight’s decisive fixture, according to Sports.kz.
It’s the second major blow to the Kazakh side ahead of the match, with teenage star Dastan Satpaev already suspended after picking up a booking deep into stoppage time in Glasgow.
Edmilson caused problems in the first leg and came closest to scoring for the visitors, narrowly missing with a long-range effort after capitalising on a rare Cameron Carter-Vickers error.
His absence, coupled with Satpaev’s suspension, leaves Kairat significantly weakened in attack and hands Celtic a major boost as they look to secure Champions League qualification.
First-choice goalkeeper Zarutskiy is also out, after he got stretchered off at Celtic Park last week.
Brendan Rodgers’ side know a win in Almaty will seal their place in the league stages and the £40m payday that comes with it. With key attacking threats now missing from the home side, Celtic’s task has just become that little bit more manageable.
Keep Reading
2 responses
What a load of desperate rubbish , the board put us in the invidious position of calamity to a team a million a es bellow us,corporate greed stop giving them your money
Is a plus but we have our injury setbacks id like to see more shots outside the box with kairat won’t change there style park the bus satpaev suspended they will miss him carrying ball from defence and covering his fullback in second half more shots from. Out side box with the crowded area and rookie goalkeeper has to be tried at Celtic park our passing was off supporters were nervous we got behind karat twice johnston will be a loss then again him and forest weren’t in tandem forest cut in but never passed to overlapping johnston fear of missing pass but they need to play there normal game fearless passing forest gas to get more forward to receive the ball and if idah is fit tell him to lift his head stop offside he got pace no need for him to set of early and good luck