Celtic manager Gordon Strachan has called on his flair players to make the difference against Danish side Aalborg in their Champions League Group E opener at Parkhead tonight.

 

 

Strachan is adamant it is moments of "magic" which often separates sides in European football's premier club competition.  The Hoops boss will look to Shunsuke Nakamura, Shaun Maloney and Aiden McGeady to make the same sort of impact that Barcelona's Lionel Messi did when he starred in the Catalan side's victory at Celtic Park in the last-16 stage last season, scoring twice in the 3-2 win in Glasgow.

 

Strachan, who refused to be drawn on the possibility of persuading Nakamura to make a u-turn on the Japan international's reported desire to leave Celtic in January said: "Take away persuading him(Nakamura) to stay because that's a different conversation for a different time.  But Nakamura, McGeady, Maloney and people like that have proved that we need these kind of players to be big and perform one or two individual pieces of magic on European nights, because most European ties are decided by magical pieces of football from top players".

 

Strahcan played down the fact that his side are strong favourites to beat the Danes who are struggling in their domestic league having lost 2-0 at home to AGF Arhus at the weekend.

 

The former Coventry and Southampton boss referred back to last season's group stages when Celtic were lucky to escape from their trip to play fourth seeds Shakhtar Donetsk with only a 2-0 defeat, before struggling to beat the Ukraine side 2-1 at Parkhead, "We had the fourth seeds in Shakhtar Donetsk last season and everyone saw how good they were", said the Celtic boss.

"Aalborg will think that because they are playing against the third seeds in us, that it's probably their best chance to get an away win", Strahcan stated.