Celtic 2-1 Sporting Braga – Our first game against Braga at Paradise

This evening in the early kick-off, Celtic host Sporting Braga of Portugal, a side we have only ever faced competitively on two previous occasions, which were in Champions League play off matches back in the summer of 2010 under the leadership of Neil Lennon.

Braga were a decent side who finished as runners up in the Portuguese top flight the previous season, whilst Celtic were very much a team in transition after Neil Lennon was appointed manager on a full time basis after taking the reigns due to the disastrous Tony Mowbray spell in charge.

Unfortunately we crashed out 4-2 on aggregate after a crushing 3-0 loss in Portugal proved too much of a hurdle to overcome. Despite winning back some pride at Celtic Park by earning a 2- 1 victory in what was Neil Lennon’s first match in charge at Celtic Park after he was officially appointed as permanent Celtic manager , we failed to qualify for the group stage of Europe’s elite competition.

One of the main reasons for that was that we were very much a side gelling together under a new manager, with the likes of the retuning Charlie Mulgrew, Cha Du Ri, Joe Ledley, Gary Hooper and Efrian Juarez all just in the door, so it was always going to be a difficult task in overcoming the Portuguese side.

Two of those new signings Gary Hooper and Efrain Juarez scored second half goals, but it was all little too late after the Portuguese side had silenced the huge Celtic Park crowd by opening the scoring which all but ended the tie in the 20th minute of the game.

Neil Lennon was slowly building a team, and the Likes of Mulgrew, Hooper, and Ledley, would go on to be key players in that side, but the Sporting Braga tie arrived too soon.

The Celtic team and substitutes that night were as follows:

Zaluska; Juarez, Hooiveld, Du Ri, Mulgrew, Loovens, Brown, Ledley, Samaras, Maloney, Hooper

Subs: Cervi, Rogne, Ki Sung -Yeung, McCourt, Fortune, Rasmussen, Murphy.