Glasgow Celtic legend and Barca player Henrik Larsson´s fantastic performance yesterday helped his former Club Celtic Glasgow to advance automatically to the Champions League group stages next season.


Celtic's chief executive, Peter Lawwell, has paid tribute to former Celtic star Henrik Larsson and his Barcelona team-mates for guaranteing Celtic Champions League group stages football in the next season.

Celtic´s chief executive Lawwell announced on the official website:

"The part which Henrik played in last night's victory is clear for all to see and obviously everyone at Celtic is delighted for him and for Barcelona. Just as he did time and time again for Celtic, Henrik made that telling contribution and, as a number of people have already said, he was in fact the difference. We would like to offer our sincere congratulations to Barcelona following last night's Champions League triumph in Paris. During the course of this season at domestic and European level, Barcelona have been in tremendous form and they are worthy winners of Europe's most prestigious club competition. However, it is important to say that two great teams and two great clubs made it to the final. We have a number of good friends at Arsenal and of course, our commiserations go to them. As we know all too well, losing a European final is not easy, however, Arsenal too deserve great credit for all their efforts in Europe this season.
Let's not forget though, that as well as last night's result, it is also the fantastic efforts of Gordon Strachan and the team in winning the SPL title which have brought us to this point, so they too deserve our congratulations. From the club's point of view, we are of course delighted now to be entered straight into the Champions League groups stages, somewhere every major club wants to be."

Barca striker Henrik Larsson played a major part in FC Barcelona´s win yesterday night by assisting in both goals. Henrik Larsson will be especially delighted to help Celtic indirectly to advance to the lucrative CL group stages. A victory for Arsenal in yesterday's Paris final would have meant that Celtic needed to progress through the Champions League qualifying round before being guaranteed a place in the group stages.

But now, thanks "Henke" Larsson, Celtic will be in the 'Pot 2' draw with Chelsea FC, Bayern Munich, FC Valencia, Olympique Lyon, FC Porto, PSV Eindhoven and Ajax Amsterdam.