Soul searching leads Hareide to interesting conclusions

Michael Grant

Chief football writer

Wednesday 29 August 2012

Age Hareide produced quite the performance at his Parkhead press conference last night.

Age Hareide is in bullish mood

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Michael Grant

Having reeled off the reasons why his Helsingborgs team can pull off a remarkable rescue in the Champions League play-off second leg, and been blunt and pretty disparaging about the Scottish champions while he was at it, he then praised Celtic and their supporters for representing football's soul.

Hareide revelled in it all, the Norwegian giving a bravura display with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He could barely have done more to talk up the prospect of his Swedish team recovering from 2-0 down to beat Celtic tonight. "If we were outplayed or the first-leg result said everything about how the game was, we would come here just to play without a chance, but I think we were really unlucky."It's all about believing. I spoke to the players at a meeting there. I said we don't need to think about scoring two or three goals, just one goal. Then there is the pressure of the big crowd and an expectation for Celtic. Everyone can take it for granted that the tie is over. I don't think Celtic are weak at the back, but we will get chances. They made mistakes even against Ross County and Inverness; they looked sloppy."In football bigger things happen than Helsingborgs beating Celtic. Before the first game I was convinced we would beat them. The statistics show that Helsingborgs were better than Celtic in everything. In possession, we ran more than them, we played really well, but the vital thing in football is to score goals and we can't take that away from them, they did that. They got the goals and we have to chase them. And we will chase them."Having administered this verbal slapping, Hareide then lavished praise on Celtic and the passion of Scottish supporters in general. "I'm looking forward to the game very much because this is one of the very best places to play football. I hope the players enjoy it. These are probably the best fans in Europe. This is why football will survive, because of teams like Celtic and the fans. I remember how good the Scottish fans were after we came to Hampden with Norway [he was formerly Norway's national coach]. In the rest of the world you see anger and bitterness. Football needs fans like this. If we aren't in the Champions League it will be good for football that Celtic are there, because of the fans."You need to save football from all the financial problems. There is financial doping sometimes, where clubs can have so much money they buy whoever they want instead of bringing up their own players in the old tradition. You have one club just down the road that has suffered . . ."

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Soul searching leads Hareide to interesting conclusions

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