| Match Pictures | Matches: 1991 – 1992 | 1991-92 Pictures |
Trivia
- UEFA Cup, 1st leg
- Record European defeat to that date (since broken). Celtic crash.
- This defeat encompassed all that was bad with Celtic at the time.
- For Liam Brady, he never escaped this result. For the rest of his Celtic career this result hung over his head and lost him a lot of credibility. Even many years later it is dragged up whenever Liam Brady’s tenure is discussed.
- The Neutchatel Xamax manager was Roy Hodgson who would go on to have a very successful high profile career including managing Liverpool, England, Inter Milan and Switzerland, amongst many others.
- Brady’s infamous quote prior to this away game: “Ideally we would like to finish the tie over there” We did, didn’t we?
Review
Until Artmedia in 2005, this result was the one that gave Celtic fans palpitations. We were heavily defeated and humiliated by a very poor side, and reflected just how poor we were at the time. The manager was most to blame and his inexperience and naivety at the time was clear for all to see in this game.
Teams
NEUCHATEL XAMAX:
F Delay; A Vernier, W Fernandez, R Luthi, H Ramzy, P Perret, B Sutter, Ron Rothenbuhler (Froidvaux 35), H Hassan (Chassot 88), I Hassan, C Bonvin.
Scorers: H Hassan (9, 19, 55, 74), Bonvin (37)
CELTIC:
P Bonner; M McNally, D Wdowczyk, P Grant, D Whyte, S Fulton, B O’Neil, P McStay, A Cascarino (G Creaney 80), T Coyne (J MIller 63), C Nicholas.
Scorer: O’Neil (59)
Referee: A Constantin (Belgium).
Att: 11,300
Articles
- Match Report (see below)
Pictures
Anecdote
“At the end of October we travelled to Switzerland to play Neuchatel in the second round of the UEFA cup…It was one of those awful nights when anything that can go wrong does go wrong; and when I wasn’t giving the ball away, I was tripping over myself … Liam pulled me off early in the second half. We were hammered 5-1 and the fans had a real go as we walked from the pitch. Liam was incensed in the dressing room. His team had played shamefully. His first managerial signing was making a mockery of him.
‘What the **** is going on, Tony? You were a disaster! I’ve never seen you play so badly!’
‘Yeah, I dunno … I just … I was just crap.'”
From Tony Cascarino’s biog
Articles
“Celtic humiliated in Switzerland”
The Times (London, England) (Oct 23, 1991)
Neuchatel Xamax 5 Celtic 1
CELTIC’S worst result in European football saw them prostrated before a Neuchatel side which is marooned in the middle of the Swiss first division. Celtic’s defending was a parody of the art as they were dismantled, principally by Hossam Hassan, scorer of four of the Swiss goals.
Even allowing for the absence of Collins, Galloway, and Gillespie, the manner of their defeat amounted to a humiliation. Celtic will do well simply to avoid embarrassment at Parkhead in a fortnight.
Celtic’s strategy was predicated partly on the need to keep the focus of play as far as possible from their reconstituted defence, and partly on the belief that Neuchatel, awash on a sea of trouble, on and off the field, were vulnerable to aggression. Liam Brady chose to deploy his side in an unfamiliar pattern, with Wdowczyk sweeping behind Whyte and McNally, while Nicholas filled the link role between the four-man midfield and Cascarino and Coyne.
The danger was, of course, the risk of the telling counter-attack. Bonner was left exposed when Wdowczyk conceded a corner, which Sutter delivered from the left. The ball was half-cleared and Hassan rose to head the opening goal. The situation deteriorated when Bonvin manufactured a second goal. Once more it was careless covering which invited the injury.
When Bonvin’s misdirected low cutback arrived from the left, Whyte moved to intercept but permitted the ball to bounce off him and into the path of the alert Hassan, who had the simplest of tasks to tuck his shot low to Bonner’s left. Next, Sutter varied the corner kick routine by playing the ball on the ground towards the front post, from where it was returned to him. He chipped on to Ibrahim Hassan, whose header Bonner touched on to the crossbar.
The rebound fell to Vernier, whose cross Bonvin put away with a rising header from six yards. Ten minutes into the second half, Perret’s flanking run on the left ended in a cross which fell to Hossam Hassan. The Egyptian steadied himself before directing a low drive beyond Bonner’s right hand.
Coyne burst into a void on the edge of the home penalty area and knocked a forceful cross into the path of O’Neil, who headed forcefully past Delay, but Celtic’s torment was not over. Bonvin arrived virtually from the halfway line, turned Grant with ease, and dispatched a shot which Bonner reached but could not hold.
The ubiquitous Hassan netted the rebound.