UWCL is Back in Town: Vibe Check

Celtic have become Scotland's first team to make the UWCL proper since Glasgow City in 2021 with FC Twente visiting to open the New Douglas Park era for the club. So, what are the vibes?

For the first time since 2021, a Scottish side has made it to the UWCL proper. The first appearance for an SWPL representative in the current version of the group stages. The first time Celtic have ever made it to Europe’s elite club competition.

FC Twente the visitors, a side that haven’t been to the UWCL since the restructure that brought these group stages, from a country of a similar size to ours. We were at Celtic’s new home of New Douglas Park to take a vibe check on how this game reflects the progress of Scottish women’s football, as well as what it may mean for Celtic specifically, with European restructure (again) and a second tier league to come in 2025/26.

Twente came into this season’s Champions League with thanks to their sixth league title in the last ten years. Currently sat 5th in Eredivisie after picking up four points from two games (having played last season’s third and fourth placed finishers). Last season their league mates, Ajax, were one of the surprise packages of the competition as they progressed from Group C over Bayern Munich and Roma and earned a draw in their second leg against Chelsea (4-1 loss on aggregate). Prior to this game the Eredivise was ranked 11th in Europe by UEFA’s coefficient system, five ahead of Scotland.

Important context when assessing how good Twente are.

Analysing Celtic

With the “Celtic End” booming, and over 2,000 fans in New Douglas Park to witness Celtic’s UWCL debut, there is much to be positive about for fans of the Glasgow club. However, the 2-0 loss also gave us a view of Celtic that we don’t often see and an interesting perspective for the four clubs that will be looking for any weakness in their gameplan with potential titles on the mind.

The Negative

Elena Sadiku set up in the usual 3-4-3 system we see from the club, Nat Ross partnering Shannon McGregor in a midfield two, and it became pretty clear early on that they were struggling to gain control with Twente having an extra player in midfield areas. They only amassed 35% of the ball on the night, but potentially a bigger worry is they only managed 70% pass accuracy, and less than a third of Twente’s completed pass total of 580, as much of their possession ended with long balls into channels that were overhit or mistimed. Agnew and Cross ran their socks off in forward areas to press their opponents but neither give you the in-possession control of Amy Gallacher, who missed the game through injury, or Mathilde Carstens, who was a late sub. Equally, both are more suited to playing in more central areas than out wide.

For Celtic, it may be a concern that FC Twente manager Joran Pot had them well scouted and had already countered the tactics before the match had begun.

It’s more or less what we expected, although we thought they would play with three in defence but they used four [after the second half switch]. But nevertheless, it was quite similar to what we expected from the team.

Sadiku was reactive to Celtic’s possession troubles, midway through the second half they switched to a 4-4-2 in an attempt to provide additional defensive support. But, with Twente maintaining their overload in the midfield area it remained difficult for Celtic to impose themselves on the game. Their press becoming more and more ineffective as the defensive line dropped as they dealt with Twente’s front three. That three almost became a front four with the space van Dooren picked up behind McGregor and Ross. To balance this, Sadiku did point out post-match the job that Emma Lawton did on the opposition left winger, Ella Peddemors, who had been singled out as a threat pre-match. The way Celtic set up allowed them to largely control the wide areas, however, that came at a cost in the middle of the pitch that perhaps would have been avoided if they sacrificed the front three for additional midfield strength.

With Jenny Smith, Colette Cavanagh, Signe Carstens, Mathilde Carstens, Maria McAneny and Lucy Ashworth-Clifford (who it was later revealed was injured, which does raise the question of why she was on the bench at all) on the bench there were plenty of options to provide some game changing ability. Especially with Barclais playing out of position at left midfield for much of the second half, with Bruna equally out of her comfort zone as a left back, the sight of Colette Cavanagh, who has played in both roles previously in her career, remaining on the bench for the full 90 is hard to explain. Despite Celtic being 1-0 down in their most winnable group game, with a loud crowd behind them, Sadiku opted not to make any changes until the 77th minute when McAneny took up the left midfield spot and Mathilde Carstens was introduced to play as the attacking focal point. A decision that came too late for any real impact to be made on the game.

The Positive

For all Celtic’s struggles to retain possession, however, Twente weren’t that dominant. This wasn’t a walkover by any means. Dutch international van Dooren took the, air quotes, big chances when they came, but, across the 90 minutes Celtic defended them well. Pushing them into poor shooting positions, or wide areas where Celtic were at an advantage, and cancelling out a lot of the attacking threat. For all the possession they had, it wasn’t effective for large parts with their route to goal coming from long balls forward rather than sustained passing moves. Those decisive moments come from errors within the Celtic defensive structure, as highlighted by Sadiku post match, a learning moment for a team in their first experience at this level.

For the majority of the first 45 minutes it looked more likely that the opening goal would come with Celtic breaking against the Dutch high line than Twente getting in behind themselves. In the first 10 minutes specifically Celtic were frantically battering on the door, and on another day perhaps they stay a little calmer and manage to take the lead which creates a totally different game state. It’s ‘ifs and buts’ at the end of the day, which at this level can’t go on for too long, but for a first showing in the UWCL proper there’s reason to feel positive. A chance to go away to Twente later in the campaign and take revenge is certainly on the cards, which is something Elena Sadiku spoke to us about after the game.

I feel like it’s a disappointment, but, I still feel like we should learn from this experience more than that. We said it in the locker room, this team isn’t impossible to beat next time we play against them. We just need to correct those errors.

Also, positive (but not necessarily football related) is the atmosphere generated on the night. Something that goaslcorer Kayleigh van Dooren was complimentary of after the match, in response to a question from our pals at the Sideline.

I have heard that many tickets were sold for the game and we know what Scottish fans are like in general so we more or less expected something like that, it was a nice surprise to have such an atmosphere here.

Nat Ross was also complimentary of it, with praise for her club’s new home at New Douglas Park.

It didn’t feel any different. I didn’t even think about it [being the first home game] walking out, doing the warm up, during the game. The fans make it special, think it was around 3,000 fans here. It’s special.

What Does it say About the SWPL?

We obviously can’t make any big sweeping statements after one game, but, this does potentially raise the concern that we simply aren’t developing at the same rate as many leagues across Europe. We haven’t had regular European representation in our full time era, despite the ground covered across the league towards increasingly professional football. The National Team have also failed to qualify for a major tournament since 2019.

This means we are missing out on the solidarity and prize money those competitions offer, which is of significant value to the league especially when it comes to increasing the size of coaching staff, access to facilities, and our ability to increase the number of full time players across the league. Increasing the flow of money within the league also makes clubs more likely to sign off on signing players for transfer fees, which in turn allows the selling club to bring in a high quality replacement and is an incentive to continue investing in developing more talents.

Next season Europe’s top tier club competition will change forms again, with a Swiss format league table system in place replicating the changes in the men’s game. 18 teams will reach the UWCL proper (an increase on the current 16) with nine coming from the 75 teams that enter the qualifying system (compared to the current 12 from 69). While fewer teams go through from the qualification process, this does mean that there are also fewer Arsenals and Atletico Madrids waiting in the wings for the SWPL runners up, which (while it’ll remain a very difficult task to progress through the League Path) hopefully means we will see an SWPL club reach the competition proper more regularly going forward.

On top of that a new, all knockout, competition will be introduced comprising of 44 teams, including 31 that were knocked out of UWCL qualifying. For this competition, automatic qualifying spots will be distributed between leagues ranked 8-13th (third place finishers) and 18-24th (runners up) in the UEFA Association Club coefficient. This competition should hopefully provide a platform for our UWCL entrants to perform on, gaining coefficient points, and accessing more of that sweet, sweet, UEFA money in the process. We’ll have a full explainer on this competition once it is named and format confirmed by UEFA, but this Celtic performance gives us confidence that SWPL sides should be targeting it as one to compete in the latter stages of.

No alarm bells need ring for a 2-0 loss to the Eredivisie champions, some concern could be raised that the league was only formed in 2015. Although there have been professional contracts in the Netherlands since 2007 when their football association (KNVB) stepped in to support women’s football - something that Scottish football hasn’t received from the SFA. But, it is important for the SWPL that we are able to compete in these games - as Celtic did - and that we continue to put our best selves forward with increasing European football on the horizon.