With their trophy toll now standing at 119 Celtic found a new way to win today, lifting the League Cup after a penalty shoot out.
After a 3-3 draw in which very few players did themselves justice Brendan Rodgers’ side showed nerves of steel to score from five out of five penalties to take the trophy.
Taking the penalties at the opposition end of the ground the Celtic players watched James Tavernier pop the first one away and then had to play catch up.
Adam Idah, Callum McGregor and Arne Engels levelled each time before the shoot out turned when Kasper Schmeichel dived low to his left to save from Ridvan Yilmaz.
Suddenly it was advantage Celtic, Reo Hatate put them 4-3 in front, Jack Butland levelled but failed to save from Daizen Maeda as the celebrations kicked off for one half of Hampden.
Maeda ran straight to Schmeichel who had no more penalties to face, the trophy was won and a party was about to start almost three hours after the match had been scheduled to start.
Rodgers’ named the same side that had drawn 0-0 with Dinamo Zagreb on Tuesday but the hoops barely got out of second gear with Nicolas Kuhn on the right wing the main threat and coming closest to scoring when he cut in from the right and forced an early save out of Jack Butland.
It was a scrappy match on a sub-standard pitch, in the 41st minute Nedim Badjrami took advantage of a mistake from Greg Taylor, when Schmeichel parried a shot the Albanian netted with glee to give Rodgers plenty to do at the break.
Celtic looked a little more like their usual selves after the break, when a 56th minute corner wasn’t cleared Taylor’s shot was deflected into his own net by Nicky Raskin.
Worse was to follow for the Belgian midfielder four minutes later, an indecisive header was set upon by Maeda, he skipped clear of two defenders then steered a low shot past Butland to turn the match around.
Celtic could have had a third with a couple of chances but were back on level terms in the 75th minutes when Kyogo Furuhashi deflected a shot from Mohamed Diomande into his own net.
Celtic sent on Idah for Kyogo, the game was genuinely in the balance with Celtic barely able to string passes together.
That changed in the 86th minute when Kuhn broke at pace down the right, exchanged passes with Arne Engels and netted what many assumed to be the winner.
Incredibly, within 30 seconds of the restart Danilo headed home an equaliser from close range, six minutes of stoppage time followed without any further scoring.
Celtic dominated extra-time but rarely looked like scoring, inevitably the Final went to penalties, scoring five out of five Celtic regained the trophy which joins the SPFL Premiership and Scottish Cup inside the Celtic Park trophy room.
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