Brendan Rodgers will lead his Celtic facet into some of the intimidating arenas in Europe after they enter the imposing Rajko Mitic Stadium tonight.
Pink Star Belgrade’s failure to get into the Champions League was triggered, partly, by promoting quite a lot of the household silver in the summertime as they introduced in additional than £40m, together with the gross sales of 18-year-old pair Velijko Milosavlejvic to Bournemouth and Andrija Maksimovic to RB Leipzig.
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Nevertheless, there stays loads for Celtic to concern themselves with.
That’s definitely true of veteran Aleksandar Katai, who has already amassed 12 objectives in 13 video games from midfield having scored 19 final time period as they racked up an eighth successive Serbian title.
On Saturday night, as they defeated neighbours and bitter rivals Partizan within the ‘Everlasting Derby’, Katai shaped a part of an attacking 4 with highly-rated 17-year-old Vasilije Kostov, Montenegro’s Mirko Ivanic – who has seven objectives himself this time period – and former West Ham and Stoke striker Marko Arnautovic.
The latter arrived on the membership in the summertime amid a sea of emotion, having promised his former Bologna head coach and Pink Star nice Mihajlovic that he would signal for the membership earlier than the tip of his profession.
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Mihajlovic died of leukaemia in 2022 and Austrian Arnautovic was in tears at his personal unveiling as he regaled the story because it got here true.
For Celtic, this will probably be one other main check of their poor away European kind as they give the impression of being to start out their Europa League marketing campaign in a constructive method by taking up a facet that has, extremely, misplaced simply 5 league video games previously 5 seasons.
It is usually a membership that’s determined to shine brightly on the continental stage as soon as extra.
[BBC]