VASILIS BARKAS finally had a good game for Celtic.
Unfortunately for the club’s one-time £5million goalkeeper, he was between the sticks for Utrecht.
On a dream night for Martin O’Neill’s men, the Greek’s nightmare here continued.
Never before had an opposition shot-stopper conceded three goals inside the first 20 minutes of a European tie.
But that’s the record the poor big fella now holds after this ultimately convincing win for Scotland’s last remaining team in UEFA competition.
Even allowing for a brief moment of second-half anxiety, when Utrecht pulled it back to 3-2, there was no cause for panic.
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It’ll be either Stuttgart or Fenercvaros in the Europa League knock out phrase play-off round next month.
Whoever it is, the club’s supporters will be desperately hoping O’Neill has a stronger squad by the time those games come around next month – especially given the second-leg comes just three days before the next Old Firm league crunch at Ibrox on March 1.
Over to you, Celtic directors.
Here, if Celts supporters could have hand picked one of their former No1s to be up against in a must win game, Barkas would have been their first choice.
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The home fans would have been more worried about Pat Bonner making some saves to leave them gutted.
And big Packy is 65.
No, Barkas may have hoped to show his old club he was a different goalkeeper to the one they remember from three seasons ago.
Unfortunately, the one-time disastrous big money signing’s performance was nothing they hadn’t seen before.
In fact, it was just more of the same.
Barkas went into this game having conceded 23 goals for Celtic in just 24 appearances with 12 of those coming at Celtic Park.
He can now add another four strikes onto that tally on a night when he became the first goalkeeper to concede three goals to Celtic inside the first 20 minutes of a European tie.
Teams from the Netherlands are renowned on their Total Football.
But the start Utrecht made was totally useless.
Young Celts right-back Colby Donovan deserves a big pat on the back for his part in the opening goal.
The teenager didn’t just run over to take a corner kick after six minutes.
He sprinted.
And before Utrecht could get properly set, he took it quickly with a couple of fast-thinking passes to Callum McGregor and then Kieran Tierney.
When the ball was flashed across goal, Benjamin Nygren simply had to tap it past Barkas to score.
In fairness, there wasn’t a lot the goalkeeper could have done about that one.
Just four minutes later, though, and the big Greek was holding his hands up apologising to his team-mates for being responsible for Celtic’s second.
It came from an attempted pass out to centre-back Mike van der Hoorn which was virtually signposted.
Nygren nipped in, squared the ball across goal, with defender Nick Viergever turning the ball into his own net.
As starts go, it couldn’t have been more diabolical for the Dutch side.
But even worse was to come for them as Celtic were soon 3-0 ahead and in cruise control.
This time it was the team of officials the Utrecht players were left gutted by as a surprise VAR check saw Celtic awarded a penalty with 18 minutes on the clock.
No-one had even claimed for a spot-kick when the ball was crossed into their box.
Play continued for a good few seconds afterwards too.
But when Finnish referee Mohammad Al-Emara was urged to take another look on the pitchside monitor everyone knew what was coming next.
The whistler pointed it the spot and Arne Engels was given the chance to score which he gladly accepted with a thunderous shot past Barkas.
Never before had Celtic fans seen so many early goals fly in on a European night.
That’s how bad it was for Utrecht.
But you have to Ron Jans’ side some real kudos for the fact they didn’t buckle.
It would have been easy for them to fold completely at 3-0 but instead they never chucked in the towel and ended up making a game of it.
Kasper Schmeichel didn’t exactly cover himself in any glory as they scored the next two goals,
Dani de Wit beat him with a shot from outside the box, seconds before half-time, that made the Denmark No1 look like a mannequin.
Schmeichel didn’t move an inch as the ball passed him by.
In fairness, though, he did make a cracking save seconds later to keep out a header from Niklas Vesterlund.
The Dutch side then came out and had a go at the start of the second-half. They had nothing to lose.
And when midfielder Adrian Blake scored from distance with 62 minutes on the clock, to make it 3-2, you started to wonder if Celtic really did want to win and go through.
It was another shocker for the experienced keeper who got a hand on it but couldn’t keep it out.
Utrecht would have felt they could have got the next goal at that point and really turn the game on its head.
But their hope lasted all of four minutes.
From a corner, big Auston Trusty leapt higher than anyone around him to score with a header and make it 4-2.
O’Neill was able to make changes after that with a return from injury of Kelechi Iheanacho the most note worthy change.
But by the time the final whistle went the only thing that mattered was that Celtic were in the next round.
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