Celtic boss Ange Postecoglou praised his staff’s capability to “battle” in horrendous circumstances because the Hoops’ 2-0 win over Kilmarnock booked a spot within the Scottish League Cup remaining.
Goals from Daizen Maeda and Giorgos Giakoumakis did the job for the Bhoys at Hampden towards a valiant Kilmarnock outfit.
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Maeda chested in Aaron Mooy’s 18th minute free-kick to open the scoring for the holders at Hampden Park.
Celtic had two objectives chalked off by VAR for offside after half-time, however substitute Giorgos Giakoumakis netted deep into stoppage-time to seal the semi-final victory.
In the ultimate, Postecoglou’s Scottish champions will face both Rangers or Aberdeen, who meet within the second semi-final on Sunday.
It was a tense conflict between Celtic and Kilmarnock, which is strictly what Postecoglou anticipated.
But the Aussie boss believes his troops’ capability to “battle with the perfect” was the important thing to victory.
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“It was all the time going to be that approach, it’s a cup semi-final and credit score to Kilmarnock, they threw every little thing at us, as you’ll count on in such an enormous recreation,” Postecoglou instructed Celtic TV.
“The circumstances made it robust for it to be too open and free-flowing, however honest credit score to the lads, they discovered a approach once more.
“They needed to battle, however that’s okay, we will battle with the perfect of them and I believed they did that at present.
“In these form of competitions you don’t count on the opposition to put down at any level and we didn’t count on that at present. We anticipated a tricky recreation and that’s what we received.
“But as I mentioned, the important thing to that’s that we overcome that and the boys did that.”
Celtic rapidly started to claim themselves and took the lead when Mooy swung a free-kick into the world and Kyle Lafferty’s tried clearance from contained in the six-yard field got here off Maeda’s chest and cannoned into the online.
Hoops keeper Joe Hart saved a Joe Wright header in a uncommon Kilmarnock menace.
Celtic midfielder Reo Hatate had the ball within the internet within the forty ninth minute however the objective was dominated out by VAR for offside.
Maeda beat Kilmarnock keeper Sam Walker on the hour mark, however VAR dominated the objective out for an earlier offside on Japan’s Kyogo Furuhashi.
Hart made an amazing save from Christian Doidge’s close-range strike earlier than Giakoumakis tapped into an empty internet after Walker spilled a shot from David Turnbull within the remaining seconds.
