Stanimir Stoilov doesn’t give much away. He’s clearly hoping his team don’t either when they square up to Celtic in the second leg of an evenly poised Champions League qualifier tonight.
The Astana manager wore a face that was flatter than the Kazakh Steppe as he was plonked before an equally sombre-faced gathering of Scottish football writers in the bowels of Celtic Park last night. The phrase “we are just waiting on the interpreter” is second only to “I’m afraid you’ll have to pay for your half-time pie” on the list of utterances the domestic fitba scribblers fear most as we all mumbled on amid a bumbling escapade of carefully worded questions, meandering answers, extremely short re-hashes of those answers from the hattered translator and a general sense of shrugging, awkward acceptance.
“It’s an important game and we need to show beautiful football to get a result,” said Stoilov. Or words to that effect. “We understand the significance of scoring a goal tomorrow. If we win, we will deserve it. If not, we will congratulate the Celtic.”
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Stoilov, a 49-year-old Bulgarian who enjoyed considerable success as both a player and a manager with Levski Sofia, is well aware that a full house roaring and bawling in Glasgow’s east end could be a bit of a shock to the system for his players. Last year, he watched with interest as another Kazakh team, Shakter Karagandy, wilted in the frenzied environment of a Champions League qualifier as their 2-0 first leg lead evaporated and Celtic won 3-0 with a last gasp winner from James Forrest.
“I thought it was a bad result for them,” Stoilov reflected. “I will try to make sure we can avoid the same mistakes that they made. They were very deep for the entire 90 minutes but we will defend and attack during the game. I expect the crowd to root really hard for Celtic and that impacts on the players. I actually like that atmosphere but I will try to keep that out of the mind of my players. I don’t want that to have a negative impact on my team. Are we better than Karagandy? I can’t say but the most important thing is how we perform this time.”
Time could be something that works against the side from central Asia. A five hour difference means the body clocks of the Astana players could still have them thinking they are kicking off at 12.45 am. It also means the fevered writers at the Astana Daily Gazette will be in a hell of a state trying to make the late print run. Stoilov is not one for trotting out excuses, though.
“This tiredness and the time difference, they can’t be excuses for the team or for me,” insisted Stoilov, who is without the Serbian midfielder Nemanja Maksimovic for tonight’s showdown. “In order to maintain the positive atmosphere and approach, I don’t want to discuss these issues with my players. We have previous experience of the time difference and we hope that the team can adapt to the conditions.”
Having taken points from Atletico Madrid, Benfica and Galatasary in last year’s Champions League, Astana are certainly capable of ruffling a few feathers. So where do the Scottish champions rate in Stoilov’s grand scheme of European football?
“Celtic are a hard team to play against,” he added. “We have played Benfica and Atletico and they (Celtic) are in between in terms of European football. They are in the middle.”
Damned by faint praise? Perhaps it was just lost in translation.
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