By the way, while you're here Celtic fans, as a Korean I must ask: what's your take on Ki?
On one hand he was clearly one of your most talented players, but on the other hand you guys seemed to play without him.
Was it simply a case of the team not being suited to his style of play (whereas Swansea seems to fit like a glove), or was it more to do with the player himself? Surely there's more to it than "he doesn't get stuck in enough".
A bit of both - he's the kind of player you get the most out of by building a side around (funnily enough, a bit like Pirlo), and we didn't. He didn't always impose himself on games in the way we would have liked, either, and had a bit of a tendency to make horrendous mistakes, play in a surprisingly soft way for a fairly big guy, and cough up possession in unacceptable positions. We also have a ridiculously good midfield by SPL standards, better even than the side we had that got to the UEFA Cup Final. Finally, SPL football is tough for players like that (but a great place for such players to improve their game thanks to the horrendous pitches and minimal amount of time they tend to get on the ball). In the end he did pretty well for us, we followed our porto/rosenborg style plan by developing him into a better player and selling him on, and £6m was a nice sum for him. The absence of a creative, technical player like that is something which I feel is a big problem for us - Commons is a clever and creative player but isn't much cop at the actual technique of passing the ball
As for the game: 85-95% of the time the tie should be a comfortable win for Juve, and indeed in some ways you could argue this is a harder challenge than Barca were for us. We worked out a relatively simple way to nullify them and force them to just pass the ball ineffectively from side to side, you guys are a bit more incisive. Still, we are capable of
anything at home, have got much better in our away performances, and have a very good young team and manager. So, you never know.
Regardless, Looking forward to the match!