Scott Brown: "The Champions League is huge for this club and we deserve to be in it."
Tuesday 18 June 2019 09:35, UK
Celtic will face a trip to Eastern Europe or Malta in their opening Champions League qualifier after UEFA confirmed the groupings for Tuesday's first-round draw.
The seeded Scottish champions have been told they will face either Malta's Valletta, Bosnian league winners FK Sarajevo, FK Sutjeska Niksic of Montenegro, Albanian's Partizani or Saburtalo of Georgia.
It means there will be no repeat of 2017's controversial trip to Linfield, when striker Leigh Griffiths was targeted with a bottle thrown from the home support in Belfast.
The draw takes place at noon UK time in Nyon, Switzerland and will be followed by the draw for round two.
The Hoops - who only rounded off their historic triple treble campaign against Hearts at Hampden 23 days ago - are due back in action on July 9 or 10 for the first leg.
Celtic captain Scott Brown is looking forward to the challenge of a new Champions League campaign.
"The Champions League is huge for this club and we deserve to be in it," Brown said.
"But we have to make sure we are in it. We've got to do the hard work before we can get there.
"There's been a lot of talk over the last few months about expanding the Champions League but - as it stands - we've got to do what we've got to do and for us it means early games.
"We have to be up to scratch but I suppose it means less running in pre-season because we're straight into the games. So you've got to think about it both ways."
