Celtic will quickly put their 4-2 aggregate defeat behind them as they prepare to face Rangers on Sunday in the second of four successive away matches.<\/p>\n
It was Celtic\u2019s first away victory in a European knockout game \u2013 excluding qualifiers \u2013 since Henrik Larsson sent O\u2019Neill\u2019s side into the UEFA Cup final with a late winner against Boavista 23 years ago.<\/p>\n
They have not actually progressed in a knockout tie in the latter stages since beating Barcelona the following year.<\/p>\n
Their hopes of ending that long wait were all but extinguished in Glasgow last week and the Celtic manager made eight changes following Sunday\u2019s defeat by Hibs.<\/p>\n
The only players to keep their place were captain Callum McGregor, Yang Hyun-jun and Auston Trusty, who begins a three-match league ban at the weekend.<\/p>\n
If Stuttgart thought the team selection signalled that their visitors had given up hope of progressing, they were in for a rude awakening.<\/p>\n
Junior Adamu fed McCowan\u2019s forward run and the former Dundee midfielder (below) slotted into the far corner after just 28 seconds.<\/p>\n
![\"STUTTGART,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0023f75c-614.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Celtic had some pressure from corners which came to nothing before Stuttgart began to test Viljami Sinisalo, the Finnish goalkeeper making a comfortable save before producing an excellent diving stop to palm away a long-range effort.<\/p>\n
Yang then tracked back to take the ball of Jamie Leweling\u2019s feet and McGregor made an important block as Celtic repelled the pressure.<\/p>\n
The visitors had a chance to double their lead before the break when the home goalkeeper dropped McCowan\u2019s corner, but Daizen Maeda hit the loose ball over.<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper Alexander Nubel was handed a generous free-kick which might have been overturned if Maeda had netted.<\/p>\n
The home side almost scored an even faster goal than McCowan at the start of the second half when half-time substitute Chris Fuhrich made an instant impact with a run to the bye-line past two Celtic players but Marcelo Saracchi produced a vital block to save a goal.<\/p>\n
The second half was fairly even without a string of major incidents, although Sinisalo pulled off another impressive parried stop.<\/p>\n
Stuttgart thought they had levelled on the night in controversial circumstances in the 75th minute.<\/p>\n
Bosnian striker Ermedin Demirovic was allowed back on the field by the fourth official just in time to run on to a through ball that got him behind the Celtic defence before he cut the ball back for Deniz Undav to finish.<\/p>\n
Celtic were furious about the fourth official\u2019s intervention and VAR rescued his blushes as the Bosnian was ruled just offside and the goal disallowed.<\/p>\n
The visitors had chances to set up a grandstand finish as Maeda was denied by an excellent last-ditch tackle after running on to a ball over the top and sub Sebastian Tounekti had a shot saved on the break.<\/p>\n
But the home side largely played out the final stages in the Celtic half and the visiting fans were just happy to celebrate a win.<\/p>\n
\n
Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A much-changed Celtic team restored some pride with a 1-0 victory in Stuttgart as they exited the Europa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-319136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}