That was a cracking game. Was that the game where Dunphy paused an analysis clip of Hartson and circled him asking was that the backside of 7million pound player?
No - that was after he had joined Wimbledon for big money,
He did make a joke of his goal by imitating him - ‘Watch this lads, watch this for a shot, Jesus what a goal’.
Of course Dunphy is an almighty wanker.
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Love him / hate him sort of a bollox
How hustling Celtic shocked Liverpool to win at Anfield
By Kieran Devlin Mar 26, 2020
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To say that the footballing version of the term “Battle of Britain” is outdated would be something of an understatement.
Celtic have enjoyed momentous wins over English teams this century, and Brendan Rodgers’ team halted Pep Guardiola’s 100 per cent start to his debut Manchester City season after 11 straight wins with that frantic 3-3 draw at Celtic Park in September 2016, but the false equivalences which the “Battle of Britain” tag draws are laughable given the colossal gulf between the two countries in terms of resources available and overall playing standard.
There was a time when the phrase had relevance, specifically during Scottish football’s golden era at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s when the two countries were on a level playing field. This culminated in a legendary 1970 European Cup semi-final between Jock Stein’s Celtic and Don Revie’s Leeds United, where Celtic came out on top with a 3-1 aggregate win.
The 2003 UEFA Cup quarter-final second leg between Liverpool and Celtic at Anfield, an entertaining but also technically and tactically-impressive clash between two of their respective countries’ best teams, was like a time capsule or throwback to that period.
The road to Celtic’s eventual appearance in the final in Seville was long and adorned by many outstanding performances — the emphatic 2-0 victory over Graeme Souness’s Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park, the Stiliyan Petrov-inspired 3-1 defeat of Stuttgart at Celtic Park, even the ill-fated final itself where they took Jose Mourinho’s brilliant Porto to extra time — but arguably, their finest hour was the 2-0 away win over Liverpool. It was also the most representative of this Celtic team’s genuine European class.
Martin O’Neill’s team had delivered impressive European results prior to the Seville season.
There was a 3-1 Champions League qualification win in the Amsterdam Arena in August 2001 against a precociously talented Ajax team (with Rafael van der Vaart, Yakubu and Christian Chivu in the starting XI and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Maxwell and Andy van der Meyde on the bench).
Two months later, Celtic enjoyed one of those quintessentially special European nights at Parkhead as they defeated the Juventus of Alessandro del Piero, Pavel Nedved and David Trezeguet 4-3 in the Champions League group stage, with Chris Sutton volleying one of Celtic’s finest ever goals in the competition to win it.
But UEFA Cup third round disappointment in extra time against Bordeaux in O’Neill’s debut season, and dire results away to Porto and Rosenborg in the same Champions League campaign as that Juventus thriller, suppressed any serious European ambitions.
Then, however, came 2002-03.
Though Lubomir Moravcik had departed that summer for a career swansong in Japan and fellow 30-somethings Paul Lambert and Tom Boyd were both winding down their careers, this was otherwise a team in its prime that boasted sincerely stellar talent in almost every position.
What’s often forgotten is how remarkably tough the run to the final was.
After Celtic had dispatched Lithuania’s FK Suduva 10-1 on aggregate, they subsequently faced a Blackburn outfit featuring Brad Friedel, Damien Duff, Tugay and Dwight Yorke, a gifted Celta Vigo side including Sylvinho, Benni McCarthy and Catanha, and a Stuttgart team boasting Kevin Kuranyi, Aleksandr Hleb and future Celt Andreas Hinkel. All three of those would have fancied their chances at going deep into the competition that season had they not been eliminated by Celtic.
In March 2003, Celtic hosted Liverpool at Celtic Park for the first leg of a quarter-final, a game which ended 1-1 but in which the away team were largely dominant. It was widely felt that Liverpool, who had reached the Champions League’s last eight 12 months earlier before being knocked out by eventual finalists Bayer Leverkusen and had won a treble of UEFA Cup, FA Cup and League Cup the season prior to that, would finish the job fairly comfortably a week later at Anfield.
Except it didn’t quite work out like that.
In Neil Lennon’s 2006 autobiography “Man And Bhoy”, he describes O’Neill’s pre-match team talk at Anfield as one of the most inspiring of his career: “Everyone, but everyone, had predicted our demise but at that point, Martin showed his mettle.
“Martin’s words inspired us to even greater heights of determination. He looked around the dressing room and pointed out young Shaun Maloney. ‘This is a European quarter-final and this boy is only 20 but he might never get this opportunity again’. He looked around the older guys and added, ‘You guys in your 30s probably won’t get the opportunity again to prove a point, to prove to England and Europe that you deserve respect, and that you are worthy of respect, and that you are worthy of a place in the semi-finals’. By the time he had finished, we were ready to go out and run through brick walls if we needed to.”
His fellow Northern Irishman’s words certainly did the trick. As they had for much of 2002-03, Celtic lined up in a 3-5-2 not too dissimilar to the system they have been employing under Lennon himself this season, with Henrik Larsson in the Odsonne Edouard role as a freer forward given licence to drop deep and drift wide, and 6ft 1in John Hartson the more orthodox No 9.
For all their copious talent, O’Neill’s Celtic had always been quite a reactive side, characterised by lofted balls for one of their aerially accomplished strikers to win for knockdowns to their forward partner or onrushing midfielders — usually Petrov, who scored an impressive 55 league goals in seven seasons at Celtic as a box-to-box No 8, with a significant percentage of those were late runs into the box to feed off his team-mates’ hold-up play.
In three of the sturdiest centre-backs going in Bobo Balde, Johan Mjallby and Joos Valgaeren, Celtic had an unpretentiously solid back line adept at defending’s fundamentals. None of them were overtly technical centre-backs in the manner of Kris Ajer or Christopher Jullien today — though Balde did enjoy an occasional Ajer-style lumber forward — but they were, in their own rudimentary way, equipped to create from deep. Rather than line-breaking threaded passes, it was the long balls the likes of the powerful Hartson and 6ft 3in Sutton thrived off.
Nominal wing-backs Mohammed Sylla and Alan Thompson — whose defensive output is often overshadowed by his penchant for spectacular goals (as this very game exemplified) — worked incredibly hard all game. Sylla stayed deeper on the right (save for one mazy dribble in the first half), often resembling a temporary right-back to counter Steven Gerrard’s inclination to drift towards Liverpool’s left flank, than Thompson did on the left, with the Geordie frequently making runs towards the back post. In the opening passages of play, for instance, Thompson half-volleyed a decent chance over after exploiting a slack Dietmar Hamann pass just outside his own box.
While Celtic’s midfield three today constitutes set roles — either a No 10 with two No 6s, or a No 6 with two No 8s — the midfield under O’Neill was flatter and players’ responsibilities were more holistic. Petrov was the unit’s biggest goal threat but he was also possibly its hardest worker and tracked back habitually. Lennon was much more than just the efficient screen in front of the back four he’s often reduced to, with an elegant range of passing and intelligent decision-making in possession. Lambert had always been a serial all-rounder, so fitted a flat midfield perfectly. This was a tremendously balanced three.
Although Hamann rifled a shot narrowly wide in the opening moments, it didn’t foreshadow what was to follow as Celtic dominated for the majority of the game.
Djimi Traore endured a torrid time trying to cope with Larsson’s movement and Hartson’s physicality, with the Welshman twice going close with headers in the first half, while Hamann, Danny Murphy and Vladimir Smicer were overrun by Celtic’s midfield dynamism. The midfield’s shape wasn’t necessarily proactive pressing as we recognise today — it was more individualistic and reactive; bouts of coordinated intensity dependant on what area of the pitch Liverpool were moving into, reliant on the instinct of the player to push forward, and those of his team-mates to cover his vacated space.
It wasn’t the most sophisticated system but it proved effective against their lackadaisical Liverpool counterparts.
Thompson’s sublime under-the-wall free-kick at the end of the first half was the result of Larsson befuddling Traore and, if anything, Celtic’s dominance was reinforced after half-time, with Jerzy Dudek having to make an excellent save from a Larsson header. The game plan was still the same, with Celtic’s intensity, physicality and angled long balls from a deep defensive line depriving Liverpool of their own attempts to either counter or build play up from the back.
Liverpool did still create chances, with the speed of Michael Owen and Emile Heskey causing plenty of problems for a not especially mobile Celtic back line and Gerrard’s long-range shooting an omnipresent threat, but when Hartson rocketed in Celtic’s second nine minutes from time, it produced a scoreline that fairly reflected the game’s flow.
Lennon recalled that Hartson’s strike stemmed from a place of anger, after an in-the-moment bust-up between the pair: “About half an hour into the second half, big John’s going through a wee dodgy period and gave the ball away a couple of times, so I said, ‘Hey, you. You hold that ball’.
“Then he turned round to me and said, ‘You shut up, or I will rip your head off’. Something like that; words to that effect, anyway. Two minutes later, I played it in to him and he shrugged off Sami Hyppia, played a one-two with Henrik and lashed one into the top corner.”
The game ended 2-0, the tie 3-1, and Celtic were to suffer nervier times in a 2-1 aggregate semi-final win over Portugal’s Boavista.
It wasn’t a performance of refined vertical passing and stylish combination play at Anfield, but of an immensely well-drilled machine functioning at full capacity. Of defenders focusing on defending, midfielders tirelessly shuttling through the middle, and strikers causing chaos among the opposing back line with sheer strength and sharp interplay. And in Hartson’s case, striking a football really, really hard .
Both the agony of losing the UEFA Cup final two months later and the frustration of not making a bigger impression in the Champions League will always prompt “what if” scenarios when reflecting on the O’Neill era but games such as that one against Liverpool offer an illuminating glimpse of what might have been
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Bertie Ahern announced he was stepping down as Taoiseach 12 years ago today.
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Not even the greatest FA Cup moment to have occurred on the 14th of April.
Yipeeeeeeeerrrerr
Celtic are heartbreaking at times to follow,agony and estatic come to mind, but bloody worth it
Nice one. I recall that particular day very well. We had cracking weather here in Limerick same as that on the youtube clips.
My club took a bus trip to Abbeyfeale for an inter football league game which was an unusual step, probably down to the travelling distance and plans for the evening. We were giving Caseys a hammering by half-time, this resulted in them walking off the pitch after a row with the ref and then with us when we won a penalty shortly after ht. Our peno taker scored to an empty net and the ref awarded us the game. That game led to a serous re-evaluation in Caseys and they subsequently turned the club around for the rest of the 90s. It was close to the high point for our club however and we did not have the resources to sustain those lofty heights after a couple of seasons.
We had a plan to stop the bus in Newcastlewest on the way home where St Francis had been playing the locals in the FAI cup (St Francis won as I recall). There was a massive session in the town for the evening with a large spilled across the square and the streets in the warm sunshine. The plan was well executed and we left the townies behind as it got dark that evening after many hours of pleasurable drinking and carousing.
Maybe mentioned elsewhere but 7 years since the bombing at the Boston marathon today.
Now that was a lockdown.
25 years ago today, Fr Ted was first aired on Channel 4
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I have always loved this photo
Big Jacks last hurrah
Wheels were still on the wagon at that point.
