Parkhead thunder missing again but it was certainly no damp squib

There was a palpable sense of anticipation. Not least in Celtic manager’s Neil Lennon excitable tweets.

The problem was that the return of the Spaniards last night seemed closer in spirit to their 1985 Cup Winners Cup closed-doors encounter than the infamous kickathon they turned the 1974 European Cup semi-final into. The 6pm kick-off time wouldn’t have helped, the driving rain that lashed the stadium even less so, but there was no sense when the teams lined-up either side of the halfway line that they were about to embark on a confrontation to capture the imagination, or have the potential to be one of those classic Celtic evenings – there haven’t been many tea-times – in continental competition.

By then, there could have been little more 25,000 in the stadium. A far cry from when the place was rammed for the Champions League nights of old under Gordon Strachan and Martin O’Neill, or even Tony Mowbray’s first game in charge of the club, when more than 50,000 turned out for a Champions League qualifier against Dinamo Moscow.

Yet, strangely, the football game that ensued in front of a crowd who, in large part, seemed too cold and damp to engage fully, was worthy of the electric ambiences of the previous decade. Indeed, the constant ebb and flow of a terrific first half in which the two teams produced attacking moves that did not lack for artistry or alacrity, was much superior to many of the “great nights” that helped Celtic to appearances in the last 16 of European football’s premier club tournament.

“They are only great nights if you win,” Strachan once wryly remarked when it was put to him that Celtic Park had an unerring capacity for producing such footballing epics. And the reality is that, as he himself would often acknowledge, Celtic played poorly the night they defeated Manchester United to earn themselves a knock-out place. After excelling to trounce Benfica 3-0 in September 2006, they hardly hit the heights thereafter, despite sending allcomers – including then champions AC Milan, cash-rich Shakhtar Donetsk and Benfica again – away from Glasgow smarting.

Indeed, with the slick interchanges between an in-the-mood Georgios Samaras, James Forrest and sole striker Anthony Stokes, ably supported by Beram Kayal and Ki Sung-Yeung, Celtic’s play last night was probably the most pleasing on the eye it has been on the continental stage since that pounding of the Portuguese. Of course, Lennon’s side were up against a team currently only 11th in La Liga and without a success on the road in seven attempts, so they might have been expected to make a game of it. Especially since they were seeking a sixth successive victory for the first time in 13 months.

In a storming opening, all their hopes of win No 6 in a month where they have been reawakened from a catatonic state could have been put out of their reach within 50 seconds – a stage by which the visitors had put the frighteners on their hosts three times. It took real courage and some rampaging play from Samaras to then put Celtic on the front foot, and there will be anguish that Fraser Forster was beaten by an edge-of-the-box Arda Turan effort half an hour in. Celtic lost their impetus, and never truly recovered it, despite switching from two midfield holders and a 4-2-3-1 system for the start of the second half, which meant Victor Wanyama making way so that Gary Hooper could be accommodated. Hooper did put the ball in the net, but the delight of the home crowd was short-lived with the player offside and Stokes having handled in the lead-up to the Englishman netting.

That moment was symptomatic of an early evening when things didn’t quite go for Celtic. Joe Ledley, having clapped so warmly for Gary Speed in the minute’s applause held before the game, had sympathetic applause greeting the early conclusion to his evening with the Welsh international having to be carried out of the arena on a stretcher. In his place, Charlie Mulgrew was sent on, only days after he lost his father. As the home side became more desperate, Scott Brown appeared for the final 15 minute for a first senior outing in 10 weeks.

In time added on, the ball broke to him and he hit a shot that looked goalward, only to cannon off a visiting defender and veer wide. When Strachan’s Celtic beat Donetsk in 2007, it came courtesy of a 93rd minute deflected winner from a similar position off the boot of Massimo Donati.

It led to the Ukrainian club’s coach Mircea Lucescu grumbling to his counterpart about how it could be that his Celtic team – who beat AC Milan with a goalkeeping error in time added-on – were always so lucky.

Strachan corrected him that it was the heart they had to keep going that earned them the breaks. Lennon’s men did not lack that last night – it was simply that Madrid were marginally more accomplished when it mattered.