Four unanswered goals and a tie turned upside down
Celtic went to Austria with a three-goal cushion and came home with nothing. LASK beat them 5-1 after extra time on Tuesday night to go through 5-4 on aggregate, reaching the Champions League league phase for the first time in the club’s history.
Callum McGregor made the collapse look impossible. His finish in the first half put Martin O’Neill’s side 4-0 up across the two legs, and at that point LASK needed four goals against a team that had not conceded once in the tie.
They got five.
Moses Usor started it, reading a loose ball quicker than anyone around him and slotting past Viljami Sinisalo. Robert Ljubicic made it 2-1 with a low shot at the start of the second half. Samuel Adeniran curled one in from distance to cut the aggregate margin to a single goal, and Florian Flecker headed home in stoppage time to drag the tie into extra time.
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Adeniran finishes what he started
Adeniran settled it in the 109th minute with another low strike. A 3-0 first-leg defeat had become qualification.
The numbers behind the night are strange. This was LASK’s first win in twelve UEFA competition matches, a run of four draws and seven defeats. They had not looked like a side capable of scoring five against anyone in Europe, least of all against Scottish champions who arrived with the tie effectively settled.
For Celtic the damage runs past one bad evening. League phase money is written into Scottish budgets long before a ball is kicked, and O’Neill now has to explain how a three-goal lead disappeared inside 109 minutes. Camilo Duran’s double in Glasgow last week already belongs to a different competition.
What comes next
LASK join Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munchen, Real Madrid and the rest of the field when the league phase draw takes place in Monaco on Thursday at 18:00 CET. The opening round of matches runs from 8 to 10 September.
Bodo/Glimt and Sabah also came through on Tuesday. Four more places get settled on Wednesday, with Lyon hosting Fenerbahce among the ties still level after 90 minutes in the first leg.
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