Celtic's Joe Hart delivers AGM amen as he faces facts over Champions League - 'at some point it’s going to happen'

Among the more good-natured moments at Celtic’s nippy AGM this week was one fan taking the mike and plaintively lamenting that all he wanted for Christmas was to see his team win a game in the Champions League.

“Tell me about it…” said the club’s keeper Joe Hart, with similar angst. The trip to Rome’s historic Olimpico Stadium for Tuesday’s Lazio assignment on Tuesday the second-last chance this season for the 36-year-old and his team-mates to end Celtic’s six year, 14-game winless streak in the unforgiving environment, with the Englishman having played in 10. “I feel him, and we all feel the same. I don’t feel any sort of division when it comes to that. He might feel like that, and every Celtic supporter may well feel like that, but I think they see us putting everything we’ve got on the line at every opportunity. We’ve just got to keep believing. We trust in each other, we trust in the manager, and at some point it’s going to happen.”

That point felt further away than ever as Brendan Rodgers’s side were battered 6-0 away to Atletico Madrid in their most recent Group C outing at the start of this month. The contentious dismissal of Daizen Maeda in the 23rd minute as they found themselves a goal down made for another hard-luck story in a domain in which Celtic have begun to feel bedeviled. But even if they could have beaten Atletico in the thrilling 2-2 draw in their own patch, should have beaten Lazio in Glasgow before that only to lose 2-1 to a 96th-minute sickener of a goal, and were ill-served by officialdom through being reduced to nine-men for their group opener 2-0 loss in Rotterdam to Feyenoord, Hart isn’t in the business of leaning into ‘could’ve, should’ve, would’ve’ style-analysis.

He evaluates his Champions League experiences with Celtic – having known many better ones in his Manchester City days – as “just tough; it’s tough”. “We’ve never felt out of our depth, and I’ve never felt out of my depth, but ultimately, we’ve fallen on the wrong side of most results,” he said. “So, it’s a hard one to assess really without sounding a bit unrealistic, because ultimately, if you line up the actual numbers they are not great. But, if you are going to go by a game-by-game experience, I’ve pretty much enjoyed every single one.”

Celtic keeper Joe Hart maintains all at the club will "keep believing" their fortunes in European football's pre-eminent tournament will change even with the growing scar tissue sustained in the current campaign.(Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

Hart obfuscates on whether he has been able to see progress in Celtic’s current group campaign – yielding one point – from a similarly frustrating tilt in the most prestigious club competition on this orb under Ange Postecoglou last season that garnered two draws. But he is admirably straight over whether the Scottish champions have deserved what has come their way at this level during his time. “Who knows, who knows,” he said on the progress point. “I think I’m going to have to deal with facts unfortunately, and they are that we’ve not had it at the moments that we’ve needed it. As I say though, to not feel out of your depth in that competition when you really can be out your depth – trust me, you can be out of your depth… that’s just the beauty of football, you’ve got to keep giving yourselves opportunities and Tuesday is another huge opportunity for us to push ourselves and test ourselves as a team and what we are trying to do here, what we are trying to build, against a European team. It’s a special venue, a special occasion, and we don’t go in with any fear, we go in with excitement and wanting to be on the front foot.

“I think [ultimately you do deserve what you get ,though]. It’s a pretty fair game. You get the rub of the green sometimes, and sometimes you don’t. There can’t be any fluke or coincidence in what is going on at the highest levels. You can take an anomaly of an early cup exit, an away exit, or if I can reference the FA Cup, a third-round exit. Stuff like that, sometimes you don’t deserve, but in the Champions League there isn’t any room for any other thought process other than you get what you deserve from what has gone on in the 100 minutes. [The way the home game to Lazio was lost] was disappointing, but you want to put yourself in a space and in a position as a team where that can’t happen, and we didn’t. We put ourselves in a position where one goal could kill us, and it did.”

The England veteran is preparing for a fourth trip to the Olimpico, having played there while on loan with Torino in 2017 as he sought to protect his international standing after being dispensed with at City by Pep Guardiola. He suffered losses to both tenants Lazio and Roma then, but in 2014 was integral to a 2-0 Champions League win for City against the latter. He knows his history well enough to be aware of the ground’s special place in Celtic’s annals. A consequence of a famous 2-1 win there in the Europa League four years ago that not only assured Neil Lennon’s men would top their section but represents the club’s only away win against a club from one of the top five leagues in the past two decades. “I’m aware of what happened last time, it was a big win,” the Celtic keeper said. “I’ve watched it. Big Fraser [Forster] made some amazing saves over the two games and we got some goals. It looked like a special night in Rome. The beautiful thing about this club is that it has a rich history. But you also have the opportunity to constantly write yourselves into it. That’s how we see Tuesday.”