Celtic ease to win against Teplice

Celtic 3 Teplice 0

Last season’s UEFA Cup finalists began their pursuit of another thrilling run - towards Gothenburg this time – with a comfortable win over Teplice at Parkhead tonight.

The Czechs had claimed the prize scalps of Feyenoord and Kaiserslautern in the competition as Celtic only just missed out on the Champions League knock-out stages.

But the Glasgow side revived their love affair with the competition quickly with a Henrik Larsson double and a Chris Sutton goal putting them on course for the fourth round.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter rekindled fond memories of Seville prior to kick-off by presenting their supporters with the FIFA Fair Play Award.

And the carnival atmosphere continued just two minutes into the game when Celtic – who stretched their unbeaten record at Parkhead to 71 matches since last losing to Ajax here in August 2001 – made a dream start by taking the lead.

The visitors paid the price for playing a dangerous offside trap and Larsson sprung it to run on to Alan Thompson’s through-ball before firing low through the legs of the exposed goalkeeper Tomas Postulka for his 25th goal of the season.

Teplice were living on the edge and Postulka was fortunate to escape punishment, having appeared to pull down Petrov outside the box after a rush of blood to the head.

Celtic have beaten the likes of Juventus and Liverpool here in recent seasons and the minnows looked on course for a hammering when they fell further behind in the 12th minute.

Vladimar Leitner made a horrible mess of Tomas Hunal’s back pass and failed to find Postulka with his header back and Sutton nipped in to round the keeper and score for his 23rd goal of the campaign.

Thompson should have killed the tie off in the 17th minute after Larsson had stepped over Stephen Pearson’s cross but he fired over from eight yards.

Celtic went close to again killing the game in the 33rd minute.

Larsson fed the ball out wide to Stilian Petrov and the Swede got a head on his cross but a Teplice defender did enough to put him off.

Pearson had two great chances to strengthen Celtic’s position, just a minute later, when he beat the offside trap, from Jackie McNamara’s pass, but Postulka saved his first effort and Hunal cleared his follow-up attempt off the line.

The Scotland international again wasted another opportunity in the 37th minute when Sutton played him through but he wildly blasted his shot over the crossbar.

Teplice made one change at the break with Emil Rilke coming on for Jiri Kowalik.

Robert Douglas was singled out as Celtic’s weakest link by Teplice but he was quick off his line in the 56th minute to save his side after a rare lapse in defence.

Rilke and Thompson were yellow carded before Dusan Tesarik followed them into the book after leaving Petrov needing treatment with a flying boot.

The Celtic fans were getting frustrated by Teplice’s stubborn resistance and their own side’s patient build-up.

The longer the game went on the more confident the visitors became and they could have hauled themselves back into the tie in the 82nd minute when the ball broke to Karel Rada in the area but he blazed is shot into the supporters from five yards.

Celtic failed to heed that warning and Douglas did well to save Pavel Verbir’s stinging right-foot shot from long range.

The home side responded by threatening themselves and Stanislav Varga headed Agathe’s cross just off target before the keeper pushed his header around the post.

But from the resulting corner Celic surely killed the tie off when Larsson got across his marker to head Petrov’s cross into the net from close range.

It was hardly one of the glorious nights of last season but – barring a collapse next Wednesday – it at least allowed the prospect of more.