THERE’S relentless.
There’s obsessive.
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Then there’s the remarkable Daizen Maeda.
Six goals up on Saturday night with four minutes to go, Celtic’s very own Duracell Bunny gave St Johnstone full-back David Keltjens ten yards of a start, chased him half the length of the park and won the ball back for his team.
Of the many memorable moments the champions produced in a devastating 6-0 victory over shell-shocked Saints, this was the one that pleased Brendan Rodgers most.
That’s because this was the one that epitomised everything he wants from his team.
Nothing is ever enough.
No man’s bigger than the smallest task.
No game is ever so far in the bag that it’s OK to throw a sickie.
In Maeda, the Hoops manager has a guy whose commitment to this mantra he can put the kettle on for.
In fact, scrub that, because the Japanese winger’s more likely to tell his gaffer to sit tight while he makes the tea.
But here’s the thing.
On Tuesday night in Dortmund, one man making that sort of lung-bursting run won’t be enough.
No, if they’re to have a chance of escaping from one of Europe’s footballing cauldrons unscathed, it’s going to take ten Maedas doing it 20 times each for 90 minutes and more.
Is there a level above relentless? If so, every outfield player has to hit it and stay on it from first kick till last.
And what makes the task even harder is for long spells they’ll have to do it without the ball.
Bottom line? This is the first huge test of Rodgers 2.0.
This is when we’ll see whether this fast, flowing, fantastically determined team of his is good enough for make an impact on the Champions League, or whether they’re just miles better than anything else the Scottish game has to offer.
They’re squaring up to last season’s finalists, a side who went to Bruges on opening night this season and swaggered to a 3-0 win, an attacking force who regularly hit threes and fours at home, not to mention a support whose decibel levels have the power to make even Parkhead on big nights sound subdued.
If this was last season, when Rodgers was only just back in the door and some were wondering if he’d be out again before May arrived, you wouldn’t be giving Celtic a prayer.
Back then, they lost 2-0 going on five away to Feyenoord on a night when their naivety and rashness earned two red cards.
They lost 6-0 going on ten at Atletico Madrid and caved late on away to Lazio as any chance they had of continental football after Christmas evaporated.
The season before that, under Ange Postecoglou, they’d lost 3-1 away to Leipzig and 5-1 to Real in the Bernabeu.
It’s a pattern that’s been woven into their European DNA for way too long, the record of a team incapable of lasting the pace, a team who fail to make up for a lack of quality by matching the work rate of superior opposition.
That’s why Rodgers has worked so hard on cranking up their energy levels to 11, why it matters so much to him that they keep doing the hard yards even once they’ve secured easy wins.
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The reason he purrs at Maeda sprinting 50 yards at 6-0 up to win the ball back is that this is what it takes to start turning that sorry away record around.
It’s what just might give them a puncher’s chance in places like Dortmund.
Here, even against Slovan Bratislava in this same tournament, they almost always have all of the ball and all of the pressure — and there’s no question that when that’s the direction any game’s going in, it’s a whole lot easier to keep ploughing on beyond 90 minutes.
But when you’re being forced backwards all night? When you’re chasing shadows?
That’s the challenge.
That’s when managers and fans alike find out who fancies it and who’s along for the ride.
Before that 5-1 win over Slovan, I watched Maeda do a few final sprints while the others were jogging off at the end of their warm-up.
He went touchline to penalty box in front of the main stand and never once failed to get chalk on his boots.
No half-measures, even before a ball was kicked for real.
If there’s a yardstick for every other man in the dressing room on Tuesday night, that’s surely it; a team-mate who genuinely never stops, who sees hard work as a privilege rather than a drudge.
And while no one would suggest that simply knocking their pan in right down to the wire will be enough to trouble a Dortmund side who don’t exactly swan about either, it would most definitely change the perception of Celtic in this competition.
Away to Real, to Atletico, to Feyenoord, to Lazio and Leipzig and more, they have played pretty much like middling Premiership opponents do at Parkhead, by hanging on for as long as they can then unravelling as their physical fitness and mental concentration ebb in tandem.
Change all that this week and the boost it gives their long-term ambitions might be priceless.
PLAYING catch-up is becoming a way of life for Rangers this season.
But on Sunday they were playing with fire too and could so easily have reduced their title chances to ashes.
Tom Lawrence was onside by an oxter hair for the only goal.
Hibs frontman Max Kuharevich couldn’t have put less behind his penalty right on half-time if he’d been playing barefoot.
The margin between three unconvincing points becoming one or even none for Philippe Clement’s men was thinner than the page of a match programme.
And the fact is that, for all the deserved praise that came their way after a convincing Europa League win in Malmo the other night, they simply can’t afford one more slip-up in the Premiership or they’ll be needing snookers.
With huge European fixtures like this Thursday’s at home to Lyon to plan for, that makes every weekend the trickiest of balancing acts for Clement in terms of team selection, tactics, the lot.
After his side’s 3-0 defeat at Celtic Park, the Belgian asked to be judged in January.
Feels like he’ll only get his wish if they put together a 100 per cent domestic record between now and then.
THEY say all good things must come to an end.
In the case of Falkirk’s unbeaten league run, though, “good” is one of the understatements of the decade.
Forty-three games without defeat? Thirty-four of them victories? That’s astonishing.
John McGlynn and his brilliant Bairns deserve to go down in footballing folklore for it.
You know what, though? It’s maybe no bad thing it’s over, because the longer it went, the more every week would have become about maintaining the record rather than dealing with the situation at hand.
Now, after a 1-0 defeat at Raith, they can reset and go again, starting with the visit of Championship leaders Ayr United, for me the country’s outstanding fixture this Saturday.
Why it hasn’t been moved for live telly coverage is beyond me.
SPORTS science guru gone.
Set-piece wizard gone.
One key midfielder hanging the international boots up, another injured along with the keystone of his defence.
One by one, the bricks Steve Clarke has built his Scotland success story with are being chipped away.
Week by week, it feels like his job is being made tougher and tougher.
This latest blow, news that Austin MacPhee is quitting to look after his sick dad and concentrate on Aston Villa’s choc-a-bloc campaign, is a painful one.
The long-haired, bearded tactical brainbox — I like to call him Soccer Jesus — has contributed hugely for both club and country.
But even before his family circumstances changed, it always felt likely that Unai Emery would start biting his ear to stay around during international breaks.
There’s no doubt that’s the conversation Brendan Rodgers had with Callum McGregor before the Celtic skipper chose to step away from Clarke’s squad.
And anyone who thinks Villa aren’t also telling John McGinn that the hamstring injury he’s currently out with might not have happened had he not gone to the Euros knackered from last season’s run to the Champions League, well, naive barely covers it.
Throw in the continued absence of Kieran Tierney and the small matter of one win in his last 14 matches and there’s no doubt this is the biggest challenge Clarke has faced in four years at the helm.
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For the nation’s sake as well as his own, here’s hoping he still has the fire for it.
