Arne Engels says even if Rangers had been awarded a VAR penalty in the Premier Sports Cup Final – Celtic would STILL have come back to beat them and lift the trophy.
The Belgian midfielder insists he’s blanked out any talk of controversy in the aftermath of the Hoops’ Hampden success last Sunday. After securing their latest piece of silverware, SFA refs chief Willie Collum has admitted their Old Firm rivals should have had a spot kick in extra-time after a pull on Vaclav Cerny inside the box was missed by officials at Clydesdale House.
The game finished 3-3 with Brendan Rodgers’ men emerging victorious in the shoot-out. And Engels is adamant they deserved their victory. Celtic’s £11 million man says no-one inside Parkhead cares about what’s been said in the cup final fall-out. Because he believes that if Rangers had scored again, they’d still have fought back to win. Engels said: “I’m not aware of everything that’s been said but last Sunday we showed that we’re a really good team who can perform in the big games.
“We deserved to win it and that’s why we were on the podium. That’s all that matters. If Rangers had got a penalty and scored, we could still have come back and won the game, 100 percent.
“We’ve already shown a few times that we can come back. We won the cup, which is the most important thing. I don’t want to talk about anything else. We’ve shown that we have such a strong squad who performs on the big occasions.”
The post cup-final conversation has been dominated by the Cerny penalty incident, rather than Celtic winning their 119th trophy. But Engels says people on the outside should concentrate more on the achievements of club legend James Forrest, who equalled Bobby Lennox’s silverware record at Hampden.
The 21-year-old – who scored one of the penalties in the shoot-out – insists Rodgers’ team don’t need praise or recognition because they’re already focused on picking up the next one. He said: “Nobody at this club really cares about what other people say about us. We only look at ourselves.
“We know what goals we have for the rest of the season and that’s what we’re working towards. A really strong part of our squad is that we don’t look at other things, only ourselves.
“Is it a shame that people are talking about other things? James equalled a record by winning the trophy, he has so many medals now and is a quality player.
“So if there needs to be something said after Sunday, it should be about him. Celtic is the biggest club in Scotland so it’s all about winning trophies. Hopefully we can achieve that together.
“The winning mentality here is different to what I’ve experienced before. It’s a case of winning one trophy and it’s on to the next one. That’s our mindset here.”
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