Borussia Dortmund defeated Celtic 7-1 in the Champions League, teaching them a valuable lesson.
A former football great said that Celtic must swiftly move over their 7-1 thumping in Dortmund yesterday night and not allow the loss to ruin their incredible season start.
After a perfect start to their 24/25 season, which included a 5-1 thrashing of Slovan Bratislava in their opening Champions League match two weeks prior, Brendan Rodgers’ team went into the match at Signal Iduna Park in high spirits. However, they were completely outclassed by their Bundesliga opponents.
After Daizen Maeda saved Emre Can’s penalty kick in the seventh minute, Celtic had momentary relief. But, they soon fell behind again and were unable to stop a strong Dortmund team, who had taken the lead at halftime thanks to a hat-trick from Karim Adeyemi. Felix Nmecha’s late goal and two goals from Serhou Guirassy before the half completed the score.
Former Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel – and father of current Celtic goalkeeper Kasper – has warned Rodgers’ side that they must move on quickly, as he made an emotional plea to his son following the loss.
“It really is difficult,” he reflected. “You always want the best for your children, no matter what circumstance they find themselves in. It was just one of those days that you can never, ever, explain. There was so many shots and so many of them went in – there could have been a little bit more. As Callum McGregor said to me earlier, it was just one of those days where you couldn’t get close enough to it.”
The former Danish international, who now works as a TV pundit, was still able to share a joke with Dortmund’s hat-trick hero Adeyemi, saying: “I’ll never forgive you for what you did to my boy today!”, before praising the forward’s sensational performance.
Schmeichel senior also revealed the advice he gave to his son after the game, as he opened up on their conversation following the humbling defeat. “I spoke to Kasper after the game,” admitted Schmeichel senior. “I said ‘this was a bad day and the office and nothing more. You concede seven goals. I did this once in my life and you can come away from the game thinking you probably couldn’t have done much about all seven, but I still conceded seven and my job is to stop the goals. Of course, you’re going to look at it.
“Take it and move on, be one of the leaders in the dressing room and help everyone else learn from this.’ Because up until this point, let’s not forget, Celtic have played really, really good football, and there is so much optimism at the club. You need to go through what happened, but it was just a bad day at the office.”
