CELTIC MANAGER BRENDAN Rodgers hailed his side’s “outstanding result” after securing a 1-1 draw at Astana in the first leg of their Champions League qualifier — and reserved special praise for Eoghan O’Connell.
The Cork-born defender has impressed during the early stages of the season and continued his fine form in Kazakhstan last night.
“I thought he was outstanding,” Rodgers said. ”For a young player, he has been on the fringes for a few years, coming into that environment, under pressure, he had very few mistakes in the game.
“You would expect him to make some as a young player but he coped in a very difficult situation.”
Celtic come away from the first leg in the driving seat despite going behind to Yuri Logvinenko’s early goal.
But Leigh Griffiths netted the crucial equaliser with 12 minutes remaining, giving Celtic the advantage on away goals ahead of next week’s return leg in Glasgow.
“It was an outstanding result for us. Collectively the mentality was the most pleasing thing,” said former Liverpool boss Rodgers.
“I think we were all written off before the game, everyone pretty clear in their opinion of the game, that we would do well to come back with anything other than a loss, but the players deserve an immense amount of credit, to fight and show spirit and passion in the game.
“The resilience and strength that we have built up over the course of the pre-season came into effect.
“I was disappointed with the goal, it is nothing new, but we showed a wonderful mentality to keep fighting and in the second half we restricted them to not so many clear chances and ended up scoring a fantastic goal.
“It is only half-time but [it is] a very important result for us.”
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Delighted for the lad! Would be great if in the future more young Irish players could come back for half a season play some LOI and go back with that bit of experience, seems to have done Eoghan no harm
Ambrose and boyata are both a liability,simunovic still an unknown quantity so I’d say it’s a toss up between o Connell and kolo to partner sviatchenko.would be great to see eoghan nail down a regular spot and continue his progress
That is brilliant news for Celtic and Ireland.
I watched the match – O’Connell showed great character throughout the game.
Can’t but read Rogers interview in his voice
Lads…. were ye watching a different game,,, he was 100% to blame for the goal…. lost his man completely
Blueman, you’re right, the goal was his fault but his head didn’t go down after it as most young players would and he went from strength to strength as the game went on.
It’s a zonal marking system, therefore no man to lose. Although he could have been better for it so could every other defender in the box and if Gordon stayed on his line maybe it wouldn’t have been a goal so 100% is very harsh on the the young fella. For a 20 y/o making his first European start in a notoriously tough place to go he done very little wrong and was one of Celtics better players. If you were watching the match and not just the goal you would have seen that!
O Connell did well all things taken into account,good result to take back to glasgow
Fact is the goal was his fault, you can dress it up anyway you want,… football at the highest level is a harsh game, and goals decide games, if he wasn’t a young irish player playing for celtic , people wouldn’t be raving about his performance and making excuses for his defending for the goal… think we need to take off the green white and gold glasses here…. and I did watch the full game
Blueman there’s nobody bigging him up.if simunovic can be kept fit and playing regularly,o connell won’t get much game time.at the moment he’s the pick of a bad bunch and just a potentially good defender
Blueman get a grip ffs. He’s 20 years of age, made one or two small mistakes in the biggest game of his career to date. Start blaming the young man now and giving him abuse about the goal could shatter his confidence, that’s why he’s being praised. Attitudes like yours is the reason a lot of talented youngsters don’t make it in the game!
Hahaha…. one or two small mistakes???… wouldn’t call losing his man for a goal in a champions lge game a small mistake. … its quite a significant one. If young pros can’t take a bit of criticism they may as well forget about a career in the game…. and I thought he he will let a bit of criticism on the 42 get to him… if he he was that type of character he would never have made it this far
You said people wouldn’t be raving about his performance if he wasn’t Irish or playing for Celtic. Well this is an Irish site and an article about Celtic, so obviously people who have a better understanding of the game than yourself (and people who really watched the game) think he merits praise for his performance! And if you’re a Celtic supporter you should be ashamed of yourself :-/
I am not a celtic fan … I am looking at the game… which I watched in full from an unbiased point of view… it’d obvious your biased towards him, , and if u can’t see he was at fault for that goal than it is you who doesn’t really know that much about football….