A 4-0 triumph at Celtic Park. You can’t expect more than that. But in addition to many positive insights and a big winner, the match also gave coach Gerardo Seoane important starting points in which respects his team still needs to mature.
From Glasgow reports Stephan von Nocks
After a 4-0 win in the “Paradise”, as Celtic Park is known, you can’t grumble – at least not until you’ve found enough words of praise. Which is not difficult. There were plenty of reasons for “a big compliment” that Gerardo Seoane gave his team.
Piero Hincapie, for example, delivered a brilliant performance on his starting debut. And it was by no means just because the centre-back scored the opening goal. In front of an impressive crowd of over 50,000 enthusiastic spectators, the 19-year-old acted like an old hand, with maximum composure and remarkable play.
No real surprise for Seoane. “You’ve already seen that in the last two or three outings, that he’s totally resistant to stress as far as the atmosphere is concerned. He really stays very calm. He did well, had a good release of play, won a lot of duels. The goal was the icing on the cake,” praised the Swiss.
“Of course we knew that. “
SEOANE
Hincapie, who was the winner of the night in the victors, and defensive captain Jonathan Tah formed a bulwark against ferociously attacking Scots, who targeted a weak spot in the Werkself’s 2-0 win. In possession, for example, Celtic consistently exposed the right side of defence with full-back Anthony Ralston moving into the six-yard box. It was a gap that Bayer exploited in accordance with their match plan, as Seoane later confirmed.
“Of course we knew that Celtic operate with a lot of position changes. That’s why we prepared our centre to then switch quickly when a ball is played in there and we win it because the full-back is in the centre and the wing is free,” the coach explained the idea and praised the implementation.
The fact that Hradecky is the match-winner also says something
“They did a great job with Paulinho, who went into that space very well, but also the runs of Moussa Diaby and Florian Wirtz – those were 40-metre sprints with accuracy and well timed,” the coach judged, “a great goal.” That scored by the 18-year-old Wirtz, who has now scored in six competitive games in a row. Which the good Paulinho prepared with a brilliant pass. This was not the only attack in which the Werkself impressively demonstrated their offensive potential.
And Lukas Hradecky also showed extraordinary things, developing into a nightmare for Celtic’s attackers. But when the goalkeeper is named player of the match from the start in a 4-0 win, it proves that not everything that shone for Bayer was gold.
“We also had a few mistakes that could have been costly for us if we hadn’t had an excellent Lukas Hradecky,” admitted Seoane. Especially after the break, Bayer lost control of the game despite a 2-0 lead. Due to defensively shaky full-backs and wicked ball losses in midfield, where Charles Aranguiz was unusually faulty, there were many tricky situations to get through.
Seoane: “We didn’t succeed “
In this phase, it would have been important to “regain our footing like in the first half, to have longer ball sequences again to calm the game down – we didn’t manage that,” Seoane stated. So he solved the problems pragmatically in the final phase by switching to a three-man backline against two central Celtic attackers “to secure the result”.
Bayer’s performance in Glasgow was by no means flawless. And the resounding victory also served as an unmistakable reminder. Seoane has good starting points to keep his team grounded after the triumph in the “Paradise”, so that there is no hell ride at the Bielefeld Alm. After the highlight at Celtic Park, the Swiss will see in the grey everyday life of the league on Sunday from 7.30 p.m. what level of maturity and respectability his team has really attained.
