Celtic's Collapse: McGregor's Fury After LASK Defeat
Callum McGregor has worn just about every European scar Celtic have collected over the past decade, but rarely has he sounded as disgusted as he did in Linz.
He did not rant. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.
“Passive.”
“Scared.”
“Now we’ll see what people are made of.”
Those were the captain’s words after a night that will sit alongside the worst of Celtic’s continental collapses. A 4-0 aggregate lead, shredded. A £40m Champions League tie, tossed away. A team that had strutted in Glasgow, reduced to rubble by LASK’s ferocity and self-belief.
McGregor has seen plenty. This, though, cut deep.
A captain’s fury amid another Celtic horror show
For close to ten years, McGregor has been Celtic’s constant. Titles, cups, domestic dominance. He has also been present for the humiliation reel: the 7-1 against Borussia Dortmund, the 6-0 against Atletico Madrid, the 7-1 at PSG, the 7-0 at Barcelona. The Champions League play-off exits to Midtjylland, Ferencvaros, AEK Athens, Cluj. The Europa League maulings by Sparta Prague.
He was there when Celtic failed to score in 210 minutes against Kairat Almaty, then missed three of five penalties in the shootout. He has lived all of that.
Yet it is hard to recall him as openly scathing as he was after LASK turned a 4-0 deficit into a 5-1 win on the night and a 5-4 aggregate triumph.
McGregor even started this one as the apparent author of a routine qualification. His deflected strike put Celtic 1-0 up in Linz and 4-0 ahead overall. LASK had begun with menace, as they had in Glasgow, but that goal looked like a punch to the gut. They had created chances across both legs and still found themselves four down.
How many blows can a team absorb before they fold? As it turned out, LASK had plenty left.
Celtic helped them back into it. Painfully.
From control to chaos
Seven days earlier, Celtic’s attacking play had been hailed. Classy goals, front-foot football, the suggestion that this side finally had the steel to match the style. That illusion did not survive the return leg.
The unravelling began with Benjamin Nygren. His horribly loose pass, 32 minutes in, handed LASK their first goal of the night. At 4-1 on aggregate Celtic still led comfortably on paper, but the unease was obvious. They did not look assured. They did not look like a side in command of a tie they had dominated.
Three minutes into the second half, the legs started to go. Auston Trusty was brushed aside far too easily in the build-up to LASK’s second. Overpowered, outmuscled, and suddenly it was 4-2 on aggregate. LASK had a target and they went after it relentlessly. Trusty was exposed, but he was far from alone.
Ten minutes later came the third. Panic spread. Celtic’s shape crumbled, their composure vanished. The slow death accelerated.
Camilo Duran, the hero of the first leg, disappeared from the contest. Kasper Hogh ran himself into the ground but made no dent in LASK’s back line. Passes went astray, attacks broke down, and Celtic’s play lost all direction. They looked utterly spooked.
McGregor tried to stem the panic, to offer calm in the storm. He could not. Not this time.
O’Neill’s nightmare and a bench with no answers
On the touchline, Martin O’Neill looked like a man watching a bad dream unfold in slow motion. By the end, he would call it one of his worst nights in football. He accepted responsibility, but responsibility did not stop at the dugout.
He emptied his bench in desperation, five substitutions in 12 frantic minutes, trying to plug leaks that were springing up all over the pitch. None of it worked. Nothing changed.
Celtic did not muster a single shot on target in the second half of normal time. Nor in extra-time. For all their history, for all their wages and their status, they existed only as a team clinging to a cliff edge, fingers slipping.
LASK’s fourth, in the 90th minute, felt inevitable. Deserved, too.
By then the Austrian side had unleashed 33 shots on Celtic’s goal. They would finish with 40 across the night, to go with the 20 they had produced in Glasgow. Sixty attempts over two legs. It was not just a comeback, it was a battering.
Cameron Carter-Vickers hobbled around on one leg. Hogh did likewise. Waves of white shirts poured forward and Celtic tried to resist with a back four of Anthony Ralston, Dane Murray, Trusty and Liam Scales. This was the defensive line in a tie worth around £40m.
The fifth goal felt like a mercy killing, another Celtic player making the wrong decision at the worst possible moment. This time it was Luke McCowan joining Nygren and Trusty on the roll call of calamity. Hapless, helpless, and out of the Champions League.
A team exposed, a club indicted
The end was almost surreal. LASK missed a penalty that would have made it 6-1. Miguel Freckleton, recently of St Mirren, slalomed into the Celtic box and briefly looked like a star in the making. When a player just in the door in Austria can appear that comfortable, that threatening, in a few late minutes, it says everything about the level of resistance he faced.
By then Celtic were beyond disarray. Spooked. Overpowered. Out-fought. Out-played.
The slick, ruthless side that had cut LASK apart in Glasgow now looked like an optical illusion, a highlight reel masking deep psychological flaws. Nobody, in truth, saw a collapse from 4-0 coming. But it came all the same.
The deficiencies are glaring. Celtic need a back-up left-back to Kieran Tierney. They do not have one. They need a physical presence in midfield, a player of real stature who will not be bullied as they were in Austria. They do not have that either.
The recruitment has brought some good deals, but not enough of them. The club sits in net profit in this summer’s transfer window. The word that will haunt them again is “ambition.”
When a club of Celtic’s size ends a season-defining match with a back four of Ralston, Murray, Trusty and Scales, something has gone badly wrong at a structural level. The players failed on the night. So did those who built the squad and signed off the budget.
The financial damage of these repeated exits is enormous. The hit to self-worth might be even greater. They thought they had moved beyond the days when Kairat, Midtjylland, Ferencvaros, Cluj and AEK Athens were the names attached to their Champions League misery.
Now LASK joins the list.
McGregor’s medals say one thing about his career. His scars say another. How many more nights like this can Celtic absorb before something fundamental finally changes?
