Deila desperate for Inter clean sheet

His ambitions when these two famous grandees of the European game reunite on Thursday night at Celtic Park, however, will be rather less grandiose. While Celtic will endeavour, like most North European teams since time immemorial, to spook their southern European visitors by playing at a tempo, all the talk at Lennoxtown this week suggests it will be the Parkhead side who will be trying to keep it tight.

Prior to yesterday, the club had racked up eight clean sheets in domestic action and they would dearly take another one in the European arena. But the example of Deila's only other big sell-out European night at Celtic Park, the Champions League qualifying tie against Maribor back in August, was of a team desperately unsure exactly whether to stick or twist.

"I love the old phrases that Jock Stein had," said Deila. "He was an intelligent man. There is a lot of things that I am trying to do similar, the focus on attacking football and the pride in the shirt. And that we are playing for the crowds and the fans.

"But we are at home and you should aim to get clean sheets at home," he added. "The ones we have had in Scotland will help the confidence but it will be a different game to the domestic ones because the big teams only need one chance and they can punish you. If you make mistakes they will hurt you in a much worse way than the Scottish teams will.

"So we will have to adapt but we also have to be ourselves, to get confidence from being the home team. That can be a major advantage for us but we will need to be compact, much more compact and intelligent in the tactics."

If their goal is not to be breached, Deila will certainly need to coax a Champions League level display from Virgil van Dijk. If no-one defends quite like the Italians, nowhere are higher expectations placed on central defenders than in the Dutch model, where multi-purpose players are expected to be as comfortable bringing the ball out from the back as they are steely in the tackle.

The 23-year-old feels his time in Scotland has taught him more about the latter, and hopes to deal better with the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri and new wonderkid Mauro Icardi than he did against Alexis Sanchez and Mario Balotelli, then of Barcelona and Inter's city rivals AC Milan respectively, against whom he was on the wrong end of a 9-1 cumulative scoreline.

"I had some difficult nights last year [against Sanchez and Balotelli]," said the former Groningen defender. "You learn from those games and you want to play against the best of course and test yourself. I know I need to be better at everything.

"[Paolo] Maldini, [Alessandro] Nesta, [Fabio] Cannavaro, of course they were amazing defenders," added Van Dijk, who was told in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't be leaving the club during the January window, and appears leaner than he has in recent times. "But they ask a lot of defenders now, more than they did back then.

"In Holland, every team is trained to get it into the youths to play from the back and find a footballing solution so I am already used to it. But the thing have learned in Scotland especially is you need to go into the challenges a bit harder and smarter than what I was used to and that is good. You need to have a good mix of it. In Holland, you try to find a footballing solution every time, even when you are under pressure or 2-0 down they are still trying to play football. On the highest level in European football sometimes you just need to kick the ball away and kick the long ball and then just challenge and win the war. That is something that is good for me to take away for the rest of my career."

The ties between Celtic and Internazionale are not purely historical. Deila spent an hour or so in Roberto Mancini's company a couple of seasons back as part of Stromsdogset's link-up with the Manchester side, even if the language barrier meant that more revealing exchanges were had with his then assistant David Platt.

"It was much easier to talk to the players and the people around him, David Platt and others, and to watch training," Deila says. "He is an organised manager with good defence and teams which are hard to break down. But I did not think when I saw him two years ago that I would meet him in the Europa League!"

Deila was in Italy last week to see Inter defeating Palermo 3-0, but in general terms Mancini is still searching for his best personnel and formation. A bit, you might say, like Deila was when he endured his baptism of fire in Champions League qualification in August.

"You can't compare ... going into the games in summer I was just managing the situation," said Deila. "I wasn't trying to affect them as much as just hoping the team could carry me on and help me. Now I feel like we are united and everybody knows their task in terms of how we want to perform.

"He [Mancini] has changed his formation four times in four matches so maybe that is a sign he hasn't found his right team yet," the Norwegian added. "But they had a good performance against Palermo and won quite easily. I don't think they are big favourites in the tie. They are favourites, but not big. Inter Milan are not what they were in 2010. They are not doing so well in the league. We have a fair chance and I will try to keep it that way."

Celtic's successes are built on a formidable work ethic, but Scott Brown may have his hands full in that regard with Gary Medel, the grafting Chilean international midfielder, formerly of Cardiff, who goes by the nickname of Pitbull. "If there is something I want to give credit to Inter about it was the work-rate they had in the midfield," Deila said. "It is going to be a very, very interesting game but I see opportunities."