Postecoglou: Celtic kept Europa League hopes alive with win

Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou believes his side have “an opportunity” to change their Europa League fortunes after beating Ferencvaros 2-0.

Goals from Kyogo Furuhashi and David Turnbull earned Celtic their first three points in Europa League Group G and moved the team from bottom up top third in the section.

After defeats to Real Betis and Bayer Leverkusen in their opening games, Celtic’s chances of progressing from the group looked slim but Postecoglou says that winning on Tuesday kept hope alive.

The schedule sees Celtic travel to Hungary for the return leg in November and the manager thinks his side could repeat the feat to further boost their chances.

“There is no reason why we can’t,” Postecoglou said..

“We went to Betis and took the game to them. It is still a game that doesn’t sit well with me because I thought we should have got something out of that game.

“I know we lost but were certainly very good and we had some other opportunities and made a couple of mistakes defensively cost us.

“That gave us belief that we can match it against the best even away from home and tonight we felt that.

“It is not going to be an easy game but what tonight does is gives us an opportunity to keep our hopes alive which we had to do, we had to win tonight.

“We weren’t shying away from the fact that that it was imperative that we got three points – and we did that.

“It was well deserved. We controlled the game really well right from the start.”

The match had been moved to a Tuesday afternoon because of a scheduling issue initially caused by COP26 being in Glasgow next month but just over 50,000 fans were in the stadium when the action started at the unusual time of 3.30pm.

Postecoglou was amused at the number of supporters who has roared on their team.

He said: “I apologise to all the employers who had little productivity today because they were missing people and schools that may have been empty but they come here, they create an energy and we have to match that with our football and when you have that and it has happened here in the past for sure, you become a real formidable force.”

Ferncvarois boss Peter Stoger was disappointed with the result but said his team hadn’t managed to continue a good start.

“The better team won,” he said. “The first half was OK, the Celtic fans were not so happy with their performance but we were not able to keep that level up.

“It was too easy for Celtic to score the first goal. In the three matches there have been some close moments but we have to accept a bit of quality is missing. But it is possible to win against Celtic in two weeks.”