ACCORDING to the bookmakers' website Oddschecker there are 26 teams available at a shorter price than Celtic to win the Europa League, from favourites Roma at 12/1 down to Guingamp at 125s.
Celtic themselves are available at 150/1. That is the sort of field which would discourage even the most rose-tinted optimist strolling past a Gallowgate bookies. Celtic, according to the gambling market, are an also-ran in the competition.
There has been a glass ceiling in the two UEFA club tournaments for Scottish clubs over the past two decades: the last 16 of the Champions League and the final of the UEFA Cup (the Europa League in its previous guise). But manager Ronny Deila cannot be accused of pessimism. To him, if Celtic are in a competition it is legitimate to consider them as its potential winners.
"Realistically, it's hard to say [what we can achieve]," he said. "We can win everything. It's a cup and Celtic has done it before." Porto's triumph in the 2004 Champions League (not to mention Portugal reaching the final of Euro 2004) convinced him that smaller nations can burrow to the end of tournaments. "We can do it in Scotland as well. But, again, we understand that it's small details which can make it the right thing or go the other way. There is no great big difference between the top players and the rest. If we can get another 10 percent out of our players and they [Inter] drop 10 percent then we are there. We have some very, very good players coming up and they want to play at the level Inter Milan play at. Everybody can test themselves as a team and individuals. In football, things can happen and in cups especially. In the league it's 97 percent to do with money, but in the cup anything can happen."
The Italians are strong favourites to prevail over the two legs. The odds are shaped by the unyielding reality of their financial advantages, namely in being able to spend £11m to sign Xherdan Shaqiri from Bayern Munich and also attract Lukas Podolski from Arsenal on loan (Podolski cannot play, having lost out to Shaqiri when only one of the pair could be added to their registered squad for the knock-out rounds. "You can see the level we are talking about here," said Deila. "One of those players was the price of our entire team."
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