Less than 24 hours after Celtic manager Neil Lennon described coming back from 2-0 down to beat Kazakh side Shakhter Karagandy and reach the Champions League group stage as “the greatest night of my footballing life,” he experienced a bit of cosmic balance for that soaring high.
The Champions League group stage draw always produces a few tough groupings and Celtic got the brunt of it when they were last into one that already included Barcelona, Milan and Ajax. Lennon reacted with a mix of bemusement and disbelief as his head hit the table in front of him.
Once he picked his head back up and took a swig of chocolate milk, he summed up the situation rather perfectly. From STV:
“It’s obviously very exciting,” the Celtic boss said. “Best and worst group we could have got.
“In terms of glamour, you couldn’t have asked for anything more and in terms of difficulty you couldn’t have asked for anything more.”
Celtic weren’t the only ones left reeling from the draw, though. When Milan were put with Barca yet again, their delegation could only shake their heads (mostly because they didn’t have a table to slam them against).
But Group H is far from the only treacherous one. Group B with Real Madrid, Juventus, Galatasaray and Copenhagen will also be entertaining and, as usual, Man City probably won’t have it easy in Group D with defending champions Bayern Munich, CSKA Moscow and Viktoria Plzen. Nor will Arsenal in Group F Marseille, Dormund and Napoli — which could be the Group of Deathiest in the bunch.
Chelsea, meanwhile, seem to have been pitied by the Gods of UEFA after becoming the first champions of Europe to go out in the group stage the following year.
This is Neil Lennon’s reaction to being plopped into a Champions League group of death
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