Celtic suffer familiar Champions League agonies as VAR and Lazio combine to deliver sickener

Champions League home games seem sent to try, tease and, ultimately, terrorise Celtic.

Celtic players fall to the floor dejected after Lazio's Pedro scores an injury-time winner. (Photo by Paul Devlin / SNS Group)

All the chat about the club seeking to bring to a close 10 years without a win in the competition on their own patch before facing Lazio giving way to a 96th minute winner for the Italian club that earned them a first victory on the road at this level in 20 years.

The Celtic support will wonder if such agonies will ever end, and if they have ever felt as acute as the final seconds of an encounter they dominated in with a strong second half showing. All undone when Cameron Carter-Vickers, on as a 62nd minute substitute for his first action after a near two-month injury lay-off, was caught in possession by Pedro Rodriguez and the ball found its way to Matteo Guendouzi. His floated cross from the right found blue shirts steaming in at the back post with two few of the green and white variety, with Rodriguez able to head the ball back and into the net.

A winner hadn’t looked unlikely, but it was Celtic who seemed capable of forcing that. Luis Palma, and the crowd, believing he had bagged it in 81 minutes when he squeezed in a shot. Only for VAR to cut-short celebrations, Daizen Maeda having been offside when making contact with an Alastair Johnston cross before it found its way to the winger.

There was all the usual hopes and idealised scenarios proffered by Rodgers in the pre-match build-up. His team had to harness the crowd’s energy, make the opposition uncomfortable. He stopped short of articulating how an early goal was the very means to achieve both. Little wonder when that would have felt like asking for the earth with such perfect openings proving gold dust for Celtic in the competition in the past 10 years.

Yet, it duly arrived with an 11th minute strike from Kyogo Furuhashi that was franked with the perfection exhibited in Matt O’Riley’s gloriously cushioned wall pass from a ball pinged into him from Daizen Maeda that released Celtic’s talisman in behind the visiting defence. Furuhashi’s contribution from there was hardly shabby either. In that moment, the striker laying to rest all the rot talked about whether he was capable of being clinical at the elite level of the European game with a simple feint to fox keeper Ivan Provedel before slipping it under him.

A first goal in the Champions League craved by the player and a fanbase desperate for him to justify their ranking of him as the club’s best goalscorer since Henrik Larsson, what followed it was a strange period. Both in the stands and on the pitch, those of a Celtic disposition became becalmed. As if anxious that the lead was a too-soon peak.

With the lull Lazio sensed their in, and seized the initiative. Helped by errors creeping into Celtic’s play. It seemed where these elements would lead, though the Italians’ 28th minute equaliser was scruffy central. Matias Vecino didn’t make great contact on a corner, leading to the ball going away from goal, before it was flicked back in by the bounce of Alessio Romagnoli to allow Vecino to beat Joe Hart from close in. The keeper appearing to claw the ball out only for it to become apparent he was behind the line in doing so. It wasn’t to be the final time that the home supporters would have felt their eyes were deceiving them.