Celtic TACON the Spaniards

It was a tough opening game for Celtic on match day one of the Champions League as they lost 2-0 at home to FC Twente.

As I noted previously, that is arguably as easy as it’s going to get too. Celtic now travel to Spain to take on the runners up of the Spanish league, Real Madrid. The match is on DAZN which you can access online, and kick off is 5.45pm oor time at the Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano.

It is somewhat fitting that Celtic should be going there for their first away game in the Champions League proper. The stadium is named after the legendary player who won the European Cup five times with the club, and whose testimonial took place in June 1967 just two weeks after the crowning of the new European champions, Celtic. Madrid may have felt like they were the true kings of Europe going into that game, but Celtic soon set the record straight by winning 1-0, and even the Madrid fans were in awe of Jimmy Johnstone by the end of the game.

Regardless of that, Real Madrid are obviously THE name in the men’s game when it comes to the Champions League. They won the first five European Cups in a row, were the reigning champions with their sixth victory in 1966 when Celtic went on to win it, and since then they’ve won the Champions League era more times than any other club has won the European Cup in general despite not winning their seventh European Cup until 1998. Fifteen times European champions in total is a phenomenal record.

But Real Madrid are still relatively new in the women’s game. Indeed, they only became Real Madrid in 2020 when Club Deportivo TACON were taken over. TACON had previous competed in the Spanish Segunda but had reached the Primera by the time the takeover was proposed in June 2019. In their transition season they finished tenth.

With the takeover complete, they’ve kicked on quite a bit having finished second behind the more established Barcelona in three of the four seasons since then, and finished third in 2021/22 behind Barcelona and Real Sociedad.

Those finishes have meant that Real Madrid have featured in the Women’s Champions League for the last four seasons including this one. In 2021/22 they lost out 8-3 on aggregate to Barcelona in the quarter finals having finished second in their group behind Paris Saint-Germain but ahead of Zhytlobud Kharkiv of Ukraine and Breidablik of Iceland, a position they reached by beating Manchester City in qualifying. Here’s the second leg from that quarter final.

But in both 2022/23 and 2023/24 they failed to get out of the group stage, finishing third behind Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain (but ahead of Vllaznia of Albania) and fourth behind Chelsea, BK Hacken of Sweden and Paris FC respectively. Indeed, in that latter campaign they only picked up a single point, which came in their home game against Chelsea.

This season they overcame Sporting Club de Portugal in the second qualifying round 5-2 on aggregate. The first leg finishes 2-1 to Madrid…

… with the second leg finishing 3-1, after Sporting had taken the lead (which isn’t in this video).

On match day one, they lost 3-2 away to Chelsea. They do seem to keep drawing Chelsea in the group stages!

Real Madrid drew 1-1 with Atletico on Sunday, Scotland’s own Caroline Weir on the scoresheet for Real. That’s the first points they’ve dropped in their opening six games and they’re now two points behind leaders Barcelona as a consequence. They have another Madrid derby this coming Sunday against Madrid CFF who are, confusingly, a bit of a Real Madrid tribute act. Indeed they were rumoured to be the team Real would takeover prior to taking over TACON.

Celtic lost 1-0 away to Hearts on Sunday. They are now fifth in the league after nine games, six points behind leaders Rangers but with a game in hand over everyone above them (although if they win that game against Queen’s Park then they’d still only be fourth as third place Hearts are four points ahead of them now). They host Spartans this coming Sunday.

Good luck to Celtic tonight!