Celtic dine at the incredibly horrible Champions League club...

Celtic dine at the incredibly horrible Champions League club of one, but there’s a chance to escape the terrifying time capsule.

A journey down memory lane reveals that Celtic participated in and won their first European Cup in 1967.

With a 15-person Scottish lineup, most of whom were born within 10 miles of Celtic Park,

they were the first British team to win the title.

They also advanced to the Cup Winners Cup semifinals in 1964 and 1966.

During the 1970s, they advanced to the quarterfinals of the 1976 Cup Winners Cup,

the 1970 European Cup Final, and the semi-finals of the 1972 and 1974 Cups.

They advanced to the quarterfinals of the European Cup in 1980.

Celtic would miss out on spending more than Christmas in Europe for TWENTY-THREE

years after the 1980 campaign. A dismal era in European Celtic history.

With Martin O’Neill’s outstanding team making it all the way to the UEFA Cup final in Seville in 2003,

the terrible streak came to an incredible end.

They suffered a heartbreaking 3-2 overtime loss to Porto,

O’Neill had given the hoops, who had been absent for so long,

their European pride back. They performed well once more in 2004,

defeating Barcelona en way to the UEFA Cup quarterfinals. After two years of successful

knockout rounds after Christmas, there was hope that a turning point had been reached.

Peter Lawwell was the chief executive at Celtic and Rangers during that period.

He joined Celtic four months after the 2003 UEFA Cup Final, retired,

and then rejoined Celtic as chairman. The most frustrating thing of all for

Celtic supporters was that Rangers advanced to a European final, fell to division three,

then rose through the ranks to the Premiership once more and advanced to yet ANOTHER European final.

But in that time, Celtic has not seen any knockout round success in Europe.

It has been painful for Celtic supporters to watch their club play in

Europe in recent years, and their next chance to end this unwelcome run,

which will last 21 years, won’t come until 2025 at the latest.

It falls amid a run of nearly total home dominance for Celtic,

who have won 15 of the last 20 league titles. Nine out of the eleven League Cups and ten of the twenty Scottish Cups.

A club of Celtic’s caliber, with the kind of fan base they draw,

has dominated its home scene to such an extent and survived such a protracted period

of underperformance in European competition; it is a singular instance unmatched nearly anyplace in Europe.

The fact that the Celtic supporters have been jealously watching their fierce rivals,

Rangers, enjoy one of their longest runs of relative success in Europe in the

past 40 years has surely made their anguish much worse.

It is true that Rangers’ recent success has come in the Europa League rather than the

Champions League, where they had a disastrous season

last year with zero points and six crushing defeats. However,

supporters of Celtic will argue that they do not want to measure themselves against their city rivals.