Celtic Glasgow's coach Gordon Strachan has thrown his hats out for the superior quality of the Catalan giants.


The Scottish veteran of FIFA World Cups was not able to lend his experience as a player to his boys as they crumbled to a far more gifted Barca side who knew how to pass the ball around and how to score. Strachan was well entertained by the beauty of the Blaugrana, who emerged 3-2 winners after the match. Speaking in his post-match press conference, the Celtic coach admitted his boys met a stronger opponent, but thought the Scottish team would have done better than it did, even while they enjoyed some brief moments of staying ahead score-wise. Gordon Strachan said:

It's very difficult against an excellent Barcelona side. We're disappointed. I think they were excellent. Loads of great players and they're hard to play against. We thought we did okay in bits maybe in the first half and got the lead, but I don't think any of us were good tonight. We thought we could have done better at home, individually and collectively as a team. It was hard in the end, but we lost the goals to some great finishes from Barca. It's quite hard to get the ball off them.

Strachan admits that he and the entire Celtic team has learnt a lot from FC Barcelona in this single encounter:

It's a bit of a learning curve for us, but credit to Barcelona they were excellent. Hopefully we can have a better return leg.