CRAIG Gordon spent time recently lending support to a Celtic supporters’ charity sleep-out under the stars at Parkhead. But the goalkeeper insists that even the prospect of facing the most fearsome strike trio in world football isn’t enough to make him miss any of his precious shut-eye.
At some point during his lengthy career with club and country, the 34-year-old has faced most of the big hitters of the world game. So he should be taken seriously when he claims that PSG’s triumvirate of Neymar, Edinson Cavani and Kylian Mbappe could even surpass the Luis Suarez-Lionel Messi-Neymar combination at Barcelona in years to come – assuming, that is, they can all get on together for long enough.
Neymar and Cavani had a fairly public falling-out over penalty kick duties earlier in the season but when they are on the field together thus far they usually tend to be in perfect harmony.
Read more: Celtic have something PSG's money can't buy - history
“I’ve been lucky enough to face most of the best strikers in the world and this three are definitely right up there and will only get better,” said Gordon. “Looking back to the first game, they were right up for it. They had a new front three and they were all desperate to impress. We caught them on a good night and we have to hold our hands up and say they were too good. In terms of how they attacked and passed the ball, it’s as good as I have ever faced. I only had a couple of saves. They were clinical with the rest.
“Can they surpasss the Neymar, Messi, Suarez trio?” he asked. “Who knows? As long as they get on with each other for long enough! So hopefully that doesn’t last! No, their talent is certainly capable of taking them that far and looking as good as those three and possibly surpassing it. But I’ll have no problem sleeping before the game. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. It’s a challenge and it’s one to look forward to, not to fear. We worked all last season to get ourselves into this position and experience nights like this and test ourselves against some of the best in the world.”
Read more: Celtic aiming to show development against Paris St Germain's passion killers
When you consider how difficult he finds it to rack up clean sheets on Champions League duty, it felt rather impertinent asking Gordon to consider the equation facing tonight’s opposite number Alphonse Areola. The 24-year-old has gone four matches in Group B without conceding at all, with just two left to negotiate if Paris St Germain become the first club in quarter of a century of trying to go all six matches without giving their opponents a goal.
Still, it always helps when you turn up at one of the most vaunted stadia in the world game and have a positive memory to tell. Gordon was delighted to remind French TV last night of his visit here in late 2017, when he masterminded the rearguard Scotland effort which got a clean sheet against a highly-regarded French team and even embellished the occasion with a goal kick assist for James McFadden’s goal.
“French TV asked me if I’d played at the Parc de Princes before and I had great delight in telling them I won here with Scotland,” said Gordon. “It was a great night and one I’ll always remember. To come here and keep a clean sheet was an unbelievable achievement against a French side with superstars throughout their team. Football has moved on a bit since then and it will be an even more difficult challenge to try and get anything out of this game.
“Their keeper looking to break the clean sheet record brings its own pressure. But that’s not something we can worry about,” he added. “We need to look at our game and we have seen a couple of areas where we think we can hurt them. We will try to get into areas to score and have to hope that someone can produce something special, just like Faddy did against France. With something like that you always have a chance. But first we need to stay in the game for as long as possible.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here