Two-horse race

Football’s European Champions’ League awaits the serious new year stuff once a few loose ends are tied on Wednesday.

Football’s European Champions’ League awaits the serious new year stuff once a few loose ends are tied on Wednesday. Arsenal and Manchester United each need only to draw, respectively against Porto and Benfica, and only abject pessimists in red shirts need fret — Arsenal beat Porto well enough at home in the qualifying game and although missing their totem, Henry, through suspension next week they have been showing an increasing zest in Europe; and United, of course, have not lost a Champions’ League group game at Old Trafford since 2001. In February’s last 16, both should join Chelsea and Liverpool, already safely in the hat, and who each play their dead-rubber final group games on Tuesday; in the latter’s case, especially, Europe is providing a welcome papering-over distraction from the Anfield club’s bitty, discordant Premiership autumn.

The wider British story is the heartily rousing one concerning Celtic, dramatically through after doughtily overcoming Man U’s swaggering presumptions by a single goal (a left-footed free-kick of such resplendence it reminded us old hands, touchingly in the very week he was buried in Budapest, of the primaeval Magyar maestro Puskas, all-time ‘one-footed’ leftie). Who could have imagined ‘Celtic 1, United 0’ when the Scottish champions were so mauled at Benfica in September? Next year marks the 40th anniversary of Celtic being the first British club to win the European Cup. In those lamented days of the one-off knockout, I worked for ITV and was thrilled to follow that triumphant run, shaped by the grand, sage manager (another immortal), the coalfield-tough Jock Stein. Each player was born within five miles, or something like that, of Celtic Park.