It’s Cup Final Day – Head over to Firhill to Cheer Celtic on | OneFootball

When Lou Holtz proclaimed “Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it,” the famous American coach was probably reflecting on the multitude of American football teams he’d built from scratch and all the way to glory.

Yet there is a Celtic team taking the field today to contest the SWPL Cup Final – ie the League Cup – who have all those attributes in spades and he could just have easily been describing Fran Alonso and his Celtic team standing on the cusp of silverware at Firhill this afternoon.

Celtic FC Women have a solitary cup win to their name in the 14 years they have been in existence, a 4-1 win over Spartans in 2010. Today they get the opportunity to double that and they’ll need every inch of that talent, motivation and attitude to overcome an opponent who has ruled the roost in domestic football in Scotland for too long.

Glasgow City are as tough an opponent as Celtic could face, yet the journey to this Cup Final should give the Hoops all the confidence and belief they need. Along the way they’ve seen off Partick Thistle and Hearts, before the mammoth task of evicting reckless spending theRangers on their own patch was overcome. And still they weren’t done as Hibs, a club with a vice like grip on the domestic cups, were defeated at the semi-final stage to set up today’s cup final winner takes all shoot out with the dominating Glasgow City.

To put things on perspective, most of Celtic’s team will be looking to bag their first winners medal this afternoon, while on the other side of the pitch Glasgow City’s captain Hayley Lauder will be looking to pocket her eleventh. Despite this apparent imbalance the coaches of both City and Celtic are seeking their maiden titles at their clubs, as Eileen Gleeson and Fran Alonso look to grab silverware in Scotland for the first time, that could be the leveller and as such it promises to be a titanic battle.

Celtic Women FC Ahead of the Scottish Women’s Premier League Cup match between Celtic Women and Hibernian at Forthbank Stadium, Stirling, Scotland on 14/11/2021.

It’s fair to say City would start as any bookmakers’ favourites, given they have won two and two have been drawn in the last four meetings of these sides, but no bookie would be too generous in odds offered for Celtic because the fact of the matter is they are due one and it may just come today.

Indeed, a second half mauling that saw Celtic fight back from two goals down to draw the last league fixture between the sides will have certainly planted seeds of doubt in a City side who appear to ordinarily lack any such thing.

Celtic had got things wrong tactically at the start of that game and in truth looked as if they’d left themselves a mountain to climb. Instead, they came roaring back and had they won that game, even by a couple of goals, it would not have been an unjust scoreline for Glasgow City.

GOAL! 2-1 Charlie Wellings (#21) of Celtic Women FC celebrates with team mates after her late winner during the Scottish Women’s Premier League Cup match between Celtic Women and Hibernian at Forthbank Stadium, Stirling, Scotland on 14/11/2021.

So do Celtic now have their card marked, has the tide turned in the favour of the Hoops? Time will tell but it’s muscle memory the Hoops can call on, and given all the meetings between these sides have little more than the width of a cigarette paper between the respective performances, that last 45 minutes of sensational football that left City rocking on the ropes like an ageing Champion heavyweight, is something that can only give Celtic strength and plant seeds of doubt in City.

As Bob Dylan sang “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” And at a blustery Firhill this afternoon the times may be a changing in Scottish football. And with the talent, motivation and attitude this side has evidenced this season, Fran Alonso and his Celtic team could be blowing in those winds of change.

Here’s Fran Alonso talking about today’s Final…

COYGIG

Niall J