Dec 09,2024
Kasper Schmeichel believes Celtic have the bank of experiences to allow them to go into Tuesday night's Champions League clash with Dinamo Zagreb with confidence.
The Hoops travel to Croatia on the back of a 3-0 William Hill Premiership win over Hibernian at Parkhead, where the veteran goalkeeper was named man of the match.
Arne Engels opened the scoring in the sixth minute before Adam Idah’s header in the 54th minute was turned into his own net by Hibs skipper Joe Newell. Substitute Kyogo Furuhashi then added a third to take Celtic nine points clear of second-placed Aberdeen, who drew 1-1 at home to St Johnstone.
Brendan Rodgers’ side have eight points from five Champions League games, having played Slovan Bratislava, Borussia Dortmund, Atalanta, RB Leipzig and Club Brugge, and a victory in Zagreb would go a long way to helping them qualify for the knockout stages.
Schmeichel told CelticTV: "It’s a big challenge. Tough game, tough place to go.
"But I think we’ve shown this season, we’ve been able to adapt to lots of different types of games, lots of different conditions.
"And Tuesday will be no different. But, yeah, looking forward to it."
On his unusually busy afternoon at Celtic Park, the former Leicester keeper said: "Goalkeeping has evolved. It’s rare you have games like that where you have a lot of saves.
"Everything is with your feet these days. And I think that’s the role I play here, but my job essentially, is to keep the ball out. And it was a good day.
"At the end of the day, it’s all about winning. Clean sheets are nice, but they’re not the most important thing.
"They’re not the end of the world, but it always gives you a platform to go and win.
"My job is to keep the team in the game, and then it’s up to the others to go and finish the game off."
Right-back Alistair Johnston combined well with Nicolas Kuhn to set up Engels for the early opener and the Canada international revealed it came from work on the training ground as he had a good natured dig at his keeper, whom he presented with the man-of-the-match award.
He said: "Yeah, it’s building that connection and I have built a really good one with Nic. He understands when to play me on the overlap.
"And again, guys know when I get to the byline, to get to that near post and I think it was a fairly routine finish for Arne in the end.
"So happy for him to get on the scoresheet, happy to get that early goal.
"He (Schmeichel) made a massive save at the start of the match. And getting that one kind of settled the nerves a little bit.
"I think we had a better match from then on. But it was a difficult one, honestly, to get out there with three points, the scoreline probably deceived a little bit.
"This man (Schmeichel) made some big saves, especially early on, even actually at the end too, the whole 90 minutes, he made some big saves for us and kept us in there but again, that’s why we pay him the big dollars."
