Celtic Reinstated To Champions League After Legia Warsaw Expelled For Fielding Ineligible Player

Chris Wright

8th, August 2014

7 Comments

By Chris Wright

Soccer - Champions League Qualifying - Third Round - Second Leg - Celtic v Legia Warsaw - Murrayfield

Despite getting their little pink arses paddled over the course of two legs, Celtic have this morning been re-instated to the Champions League after it was found their opponents in the qualifying round, Legia Warsaw, fielded an ineligible player at Murrayfield.

Bartosz Bereszynski, who came on as an 86th-minute substitute for Legia in the second leg on Wednesday night, was supposed to be suspended for the game following a red card in last season’s Europa League.

Having been spanked 4-1 out in Poland, Ronny Deila’s abject Celtic side went on to lose the second leg 0-2 at home to consign themselves to a hefty 6-1 aggregate defeat.

However, UEFA have since scratched the second leg result and awarded Celtic a 3-0 win, meaning the aggregate score now stands at 4-4 with the Bhoys going through on away goals at Legia’s expense.

Celtic will now go into the draw for the play-offs, i.e, the final hurdle before the lucrative promised land that is the Champions League group stages.

This is the second time Celtic have benefited from a cock-up like this in recent history, finding themselves reinstated to the 2011/12 Europa League group stages after initially crashing out in the qualifiers to FC Sion.

It later came to light that the Swiss side had fielded not one, not two, but FIVE ineligible players against them after breaching a FIFA transfer ban.

Posted in Champions League, Newsnow, Scottish football

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7 Comments

  1. andy says:

    That’s just crazy,you wonder how a club could make such a stupid oversight as that potentially costing them millions.

  2. paulo says:

    Rules are clear… play a ‘suspended’ player result’s in a 3-0 reverse score

  3. Russ says:

    They thought he’d served his suspension against both St Patrick’s matches and the first Celtic game, therefore it’s simply a clerical error for not registering him againt St Pat’s – seems a bit harsh!

  4. Hey says:

    Of course, rules are rules – but only when rich clubs benefit from them :) When the club is little known and Bulgarian – for example, Litex Lovech – there are no rules :) Here is some food for thought from the BBC: “However, in 2010, Uefa fined Debrecen £15,000 but rejected a protest from opponents Litex Lovech, who wanted the Hungarian side kicked out of the tournament for fielding an ineligible player.
    Debrecen argued that they fielded Peter Mate in good faith as a substitute in Bulgaria when they were leading 4-1 on aggregate.
    Uefa ruled that Debrecen had “no interest in fielding this player for the three last minutes of additional time, when the score was so clearly in its favour”.”

  5. Inno says:

    The “Debrecen Situation” was different though – it was an ineligible player, for which there’s several different punishments – Legia played a suspended player, in UEFA’s rules, the only punishment for that is a 3-0 forfeit.

    Interesting though – Celtic only scraped through on away goals. Legia missed two penalties in the first leg; score one of those, and they would have been through, even with this punishment.

  6. Jarren says:

    A maximum of 7-8 minutes left to play & 5 goals to the good, it’s pretty clear Legia did not bring the guy on in desperate hope they wouldn’t get found out.

    But as everyone says above, rules are rules.

  7. blee says:

    Yes, lets always follow stupid rules… Am I right?

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