German international Andreas Hinkel was disappointed to lose out to Arsenal in the recent Champions League play-off but he knows that they'll be hard pushed to meet another side of that quality in the Europa League and with that knowledge he insists that the Celts will be a match for any of the other sides in the competition and they are perfectly capable of winning it. "I think we can do it because I don't see a strong team like Arsenal in this competition," said Hinkel. "There are very good teams in it but I think we can win against these teams. In this competition, everyone can win."
- We can do it
"In the Champions League it is always five or six teams who can win and you know who they are before it starts," continued the Celtic right-back. "But the Uefa Cup was different. Last season it was Shakhtar who won, before that it was Zenit St Petersburg, and Sevilla also won the competition. And there were very good teams in it. Bayern Munich were in it, Tottenham as well. They could've won it but they didn't."
"In the Uefa Cup and the Champions League, small things decided games." said Hinkel. "I remember when I won the Uefa Cup with Sevilla, it was so tight. We played an away game in Shakhtar Donetsk and we were nearly out and then our goalkeeper scored in the last minute and we won the competition."
Celtic will begin their campaign on Thursday when they travel to Israel to face Hapoel Tel-Aviv at the Bloomfield Stadium. Group C also includes Rapid Vienna, who disposed of Martin O'Neill's Aston Villa in the play-offs, and Hamburg, a side that Andreas knows well from his Bundesliga days. He expects that they will all be worthy opponents but singles out the German side as the main threat.
"Hamburg are confident at the moment," said Celtic's number 2. "They have a strong side, a big squad, a good squad. It's the tightest rival. We have to win our home games and I think we can do something away from home as well. We have to be confident that we can go through. We want to win more away games. In the last few years, Celtic have not won a lot of away games. We have the quality to win away games."