A result of the “digital age” redevelopment of the footballing Mecca that has necessitated plenty of bucks for the bangs. Just the billion euros is expected to be lavished on – among numerous upgrades such as both retractable roof and pitch – wrapping the stadium in steel stripes. These will allow moving images and colour displays to be projected on to them. It is fortunate the club have always enjoyed, eh, the favour of their government. The €585 million loan initially agreed has proven wholly inadequate to cover a project now a year behind schedule. Completion is not expected until next summer.

That is a pity for Celtic. Their pilgrimage to the house of the game’s deity – the 14 Champions League/European Cup jewels on their crown, twice the number of any other club – has been craved by their support and players throughout this millennium. It is a pity too that the reduced circumstances in which the teams’ closing fixture of Group F will be played out isn’t restricted to the girders and brick redesign that have clipped the capacity by a quarter to 62,000. Ultimately, so grand a stage for Celtic and Ange Postecoglou will play host to an encounter of so little importance. The construction work being tackled with fearless zeal by the Australian is germane to that. Celtic’s determination to be as expansive as the tree-lined boulevard Paseo de la Castellana that bounds the Bernabeu as one of the stylish Madrid’s main thoroughfares is admirable.

It did, though, confront harsh reality in a section that has earned them only two points, a haul claimed with 1-1 draws from the meetings with Shakhtar Donetsk. The second of these, at Celtic Park last midweek, ensured that their European commitments for the season would come to a close in the Spanish capital. Postecolgou’s men have probably performed to a higher level as an unyielding front-foot side in all five of their games than seemed possible. To ensure that their every match-up has been genuinely competitive. They stretched Madrid for an hour in the 3-0 opening night Glasgow loss, and caused real issues for Leipzig in both their face-offs, despite the 3-1 reverse in Germany and 2-0 home defeat. Meanwhile, they ought to have won away to Shakhtar. But two goals from 68 goal attempts was a dead weight that condemned them to being – in purely scoreboard terms, a ‘purely’ that is anathema to Postecoglou – the deadbeats of Group F.

The Estadio Santiago Bernabeu is undergoing a lot of remedial work, which has gone over budget.

All of which creates a particular sort of intrigue for Celtic when assessing their assignment in the Bernabeu, the club’s first visit to the hallowed ground since a European Cup quarter-final second leg in March 1980. A night when a 3-0 loss prevented them progressing to the latter stages of the competition for the only time outwith their golden period under Jock Stein across the late 1960s/early 1970s. In all truth, a similar result could be on the cards this time around. Celtic have won only six of their 19 European games under Postecoglou. The scatty 4-2 win over FC Jablonec last summer is their only such success in their seven away days. Never mind that, as a club, Celtic can point to a mere two victories in 32 Champions League encounters on the road.

Their displays at the highest echelon of the game this season have provided real promise about what could lie ahead for Postecoglou’s team in the competition. Certainly, in taking the support with him, that is the optimism framing an, ultimately, fruitless campaign for this constituency. Maybe right now, maybe facing the holders in the Bernabeu when they require to win to ensure they top Group F, isn’t the occasion to start making good on what it has seemed Celtic could potentially produce in such exalted company. It grinds the Australian’s gears to talk of his team fashioning the sort of outcomes to demonstrate that they belong in this domain, but any sort of result against Carlo Ancelotti’s team would add to the shards of feelgood that have been precipitated by their head-on confronting of their Champions League challenges these past two months.

And if they are looking for a spirit to invoke, it comes in how Celtic’s handled their most notable evening in the stadium. That came with their role as the guests for Alfredo Di Stefano’s testimonial two weeks after they had conquered Europe with their Lisbon triumph on May 25. Stein’s team arrived in the city with the Madrileños and their club considering them upstarts. A team from an unfashionable football land that had elevated beyond their station with a success in a European Cup competition they considered was their by rights. At that stage Real had snared the trophy six of the 12 times it had been played for … their most recent lifting of the big-ears silverware only 12 months before. As the first non-Latin side to bag it, Celtic have opened up new frontiers.

In an fiercely contested affair – Bertie Auld and Amancio were sent off for a bout of boxing – Celtic demonstrated precisely why they were the continent’s top dogs. Their style, a precursor to total football, was exemplified with the flying flea that was Jimmy Johnstone. He produced the game of his life to run circles round the white-shirted hosts. “None of them would come near me” in the final quarter of an hour he said of his footballing zenith, to earn a guard of honour at the end of 1-0 win that came courtesy of a Bobby Lennox strike. Newspaper Marca summed it up – ‘May the football which Celtic play stay among us Spanish style. Amen.’ It was an evening that Celtic showed their true worth. Even if the stakes are meagre in comparison, however counter-intuitive such might seem, that is the challenge for Postecoglou’s men now.

‘May the football which Celtic play stay among us Spanish style. Amen’: Showing true worth high on agenda once again