{"id":350390,"date":"2025-08-17T00:29:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T00:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/350390\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T00:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T00:29:13","slug":"celtics-champions-league-opponents-suffer-rare-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/350390\/","title":{"rendered":"Celtic’s Champions League opponents suffer rare defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n They lost 3-2 to Yelimay Semey despite initially leading by two goals.\n<\/p>\n

\n The defeat marks only their third loss in 20 top-flight matches this season.\n<\/p>\n

\n Head coach Rafael Urazbakhtin made five changes to the team that travelled to Slovakia for a penalty shoot-out win against Slovan Bratislava midweek.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Read more:\n<\/p>\n

\n Brazilian summer signing Edmilson scored both of Kairat’s goals.\n<\/p>\n

\n The reigning Kazakh champions now face a 7,000-mile round trip to Scotland to play Celtic<\/a> in the Champions League<\/a> play-off.\n<\/p>\n

\n Celtic come into the match following a 4-1 victory against Falkirk in the Premier Sports Cup on Friday night.\n<\/p>\n

\n Daizen Maeda<\/a>, Alistair Johnston<\/a>, and Dane Murray were among the goals.\n<\/p>\n

\n Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers<\/a> remains hopeful of adding to his squad before the first leg against Kairat.\n<\/p>\n

\n Rodgers said: “It would be great.\n<\/p>\n

\n “We’ve obviously named a squad, but right up until just before the game we can do that.\n<\/p>\n

\n “So that would be really good if we can.”\n<\/p>\n

\n The deadline for two further additions to the 25-man squad submitted to UEFA<\/a> expires at 11pm on Tuesday night.\n<\/p>\n

\n Celtic will be looking to carry their cup form into the crucial Champions League play-off against Kairat.\n<\/p>\n

\n The outcome of this two-legged tie will determine who progresses to the league phase.\n<\/p>\n

\n Both teams will be eager to make a strong start in the first leg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They lost 3-2 to Yelimay Semey despite initially leading by two goals. The defeat marks only their third…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-350390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115041282484559003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}