As our amazing uefa cup run continued into the last 16, Celtic were again paired with a top team from one of the toughest leagues around. After knocking out Celta Vigo, the third best team in the primera liga at the time, uefa handed us Stuttgart, the fourth placed team in the Bundesliga. Added to this was the prospect of a rematch of the epic Liverpool ‘Battle of Britain’ encounter of 1997 should we make it to the quarterfinals. Good thing Martin doesn’t mind doing it the hard way!

So as our merry bunch set out that Thursday morning, all voices were ready to roar on our apparently ‘less gifted’ team against this young, fast flowing, high flying Stuttgart machine. Seven of us travelled in all: Joe Rotherham, Joe Sweeney, Frankie McKay, Mickey McDaid, Kevin Rotherham, Joe Gray and Gareth Keys.

Due to the Germans dictating TV rights, kick-off was much later than usual at 8.30pm. This disgusted everyone as it only gave us one extra hour in the bars beforehand! The first port of call was the famous haughians bar. This was Mickey McDaid’s home from home as he couldn’t stop singing its praises from the moment he set foot inside, especially the brave soul on wonky guitar and warbled voice beating out rebel songs to 4 or 5 strong partially deaf audience!!
So we quickly high tailed it on down to the famous bairds bar, to ‘give the younger boys the bairds experience’ I think was the exact quote (or excuse) from the ‘man on a mission’ McDaid!

Sure enough Bairds was jumping with plenty of singing shouting and dancing, and, to their credit, half full of the Stuttgart faithful! They spent their time downing the ale like madmen and trying to learn the words of every song from more than willing celtic teachers. They seemed most interested in the anti English sentiments of some tunes, and even one rocket wanted to start a sing along from both sets of fans once inside the ground on his newly acquired lyrics!
The beer was flowing rightly now as some eyes were beginning to show it! Mr McKay!!

On the way up to the ground, we stopped in again at Haughians to see if the notorious flute band had whipped up any more of a crowd. Surely an understatement as we could barely get in the door! The red stripe was out again in force and when Mickey’s favourite ‘musician’ from earlier took the stage again, he had enough nectar in him to appreciate the anthems that were now nearly lifting the roof off!

Just as kick-off was fast approaching, the adrenalin was pumped to the max by a roaring rendition of you’ll never walk alone with the whole bar, with scarfs aloft, ‘swaying’ to the sweet silver song of a lark!

Once in the ground, the atmosphere was absolutely fantastic, the type of special buzz really only experienced on big European nights. The stunned look on the three parkhead first timers was a sight in itself!! I think the noise and sheer numbers was a bit overwhelming. But from the huddle to the final whistle not one of us were prepared to stop singing and cheering our boys on.

The bhoys started nervously and took a while to settle, but when they did, the link up play was fast and incisive. So much so, that a great pass set petrov through on goal only to be chopped down by centreback Bordon, who was rightly dismissed by the indomitable Collina. The fans saw this as their cue to get right behind the team, only for hopes to be momentarily dashed by kuranyi’s sucker punch a few minutes later.
This is where the self belief and work rate of Martins men shone through as they upped the tempo and overturned the deficit to 2-1 at half time through a great strike from lambert and an opportunist one from Maloney. The best part about these goals was the wee drunk guy in the row below us. He kept jumping up into our row to celebrate wildly and then after the celebrations were finished, totally forgot where he was and stood with us until informed of his drunken error! Pure class!

Into the second half, the atmosphere was even more electric as the 60,000 strong sensed a great European result was in our grasp and urged the team forward for more goals. The half was played entirely in Stuttgart territory and Celtic played some great attacking football, utilising the extra man down the flanks at every opportunity and really looking a different class to our German counterparts. Petrov then powered in the third from a tight angle just after the hour to really whip up the crowd. It is not often you hear ‘We want Four’ during Celtic’s European nights, but we were actually unlucky not to get the fourth the bhoys’ performance actually merited. All were content at the final whistle though, and were confident we could finish the job the following week in Germany. The celebrations didn’t stop on the boat home either; outstanding given it was 4AM when we arrived back in Belfast!
All in all a great European night to remember, and by this performance many more to come. Bring on Liverpool!!