Celtic surrendered a four-goal aggregate lead in Linz on Tuesday night, losing 5-1 after extra time to LASK and crashing out of the Champions League play-off round for the second season in succession. It is a result without parallel in the club’s 138-year European history, and it did not happen by accident.
Callum McGregor’s deflected strike in the 21st minute at the Raiffeisen Arena made it 4-0 on aggregate. From that moment Celtic conceded five times in 88 minutes of football. Moses Usor punished a slack Benjamin Nygren pass on 32 minutes, Robert Ljubicic struck from distance three minutes after the interval, Samuel Adeniran did the same on 58, and Florian Flecker headed in on 90 minutes to force extra time. Adeniran’s second, in the 109th, completed the most improbable comeback of the qualifying campaign and sent LASK — Austrian league runners-up, and a side beaten comfortably at Celtic Park six days earlier — into the league phase.
Martin O’Neill did not hide. “We should’ve been out of sight by half-time,” he said. “We missed two great opportunities and then we gave them a lifeline right before half-time and then another one just after it. That’s my team, that’s my responsibility.” Asked whether this ranked among the worst European results in the club’s history, he replied: “I would say absolutely, yes.” He then reached for the only comparison he had. “I put it up there before with the disappointment of losing the UEFA Cup final in 2003, but tonight is so, so disappointing.”
The anatomy of a collapse
Seville was a defeat by a better team over 120 minutes. This was something else. The first leg on 19 August had been close to a perfect European night: Nygren curling in Kieran Tierney’s delivery, then Camilo Duran twice — a thumped finish from another Tierney cross and a curled strike into the top corner from the edge of the box. Celtic did not need to be brilliant in Austria. They needed to be organised for 90 minutes.
They were not. Three of LASK’s four goals in normal time came from outside the penalty area or from a set-piece situation Celtic failed to attack, and the equaliser stemmed from a careless pass by the same player who had opened the scoring at Celtic Park. Once the tie shifted, there was no structure to fall back on and no midfield control to slow the game down. McGregor, the scorer and the captain, offered the most damning verdict of all: “We looked scared to win.”
A squad sent into the tie unfinished
The warning signs were visible before kick-off, and they were not tactical. Celtic arrived in Linz having sold Arne Engels to West Ham for £22m days before the tie, having already lost Daizen Maeda, Kasper Schmeichel, Kelechi Iheanacho and Marcelo Saracchi over the summer. Alistair Johnston was absent with a leg muscle injury that ruled him out of both legs. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was suspended. Jota was not registered for the competition.
O’Neill had spent the build-up publicly hunting for “a box-to-box midfield player with real physicality” to replace Engels — an admission, in effect, that the squad he was about to send out was incomplete. Selling a first-choice midfielder with a Champions League play-off in the diary is a board-level decision, not a coaching one, and the consequences arrived on schedule. Celtic’s recruitment model has long depended on selling high and reinvesting quickly. On Tuesday the second half of that equation was conspicuously missing.
The cost, in money and in standing
The financial hit is estimated at more than £20m (€23.38m) in lost Champions League revenue — the guaranteed participation fee, matchday income from eight league-phase fixtures, and the broadcast pool that comes with it. For a club whose domestic dominance is underwritten by European income, that is not an abstraction; it is the difference between competing for the players O’Neill says he wants and shopping a tier below.
It is also the second consecutive August in which Celtic have fallen at the final hurdle. Last season Brendan Rodgers’ side went out to Kairat Almaty on penalties after 210 goalless minutes, with Temirlan Anarbekov saving three spot-kicks in Almaty. Two years, two play-off exits, two drops into the Europa League. A club that reached the knockout play-offs of the expanded Champions League in 2024-25 has now missed the competition proper twice running.
What happens next
Celtic parachute into the Europa League league phase, which at least preserves eight European fixtures and a meaningful slice of prize money. But the mood around Celtic Park will not be settled by a consolation draw. O’Neill, who took charge in an interim capacity and has since had to hold together a squad thinned by sales, will face questions he did not create and cannot fully answer. The board will face sharper ones about why Engels left when he did and why his replacement had not arrived.
Scottish champions are judged in August. On this evidence, Celtic were not ready for the examination — and the deficiencies exposed in Linz were built long before Adeniran struck in the 109th minute.
Ahmad Ali is Sports Editor at SportsPortal.net.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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