CELTIC will welcome back 9000 fans to Celtic Park for their first Champions League qualifier on Tuesday it has emerged.

The club made the official announcement this afternoon after protracted talks with government officials over getting as many fans back in the stadium as possible.

The Hoops have been pushing for fans to get back for a long time. After seeing summer football events in Scotland get the go ahead with 12k and even 16k fans inside a stadium, there was a real desire to see similar numbers in at Celtic Park.

The club asked for 18k supporters to be allowed into the ground, in the end they got half that but it’s still a sizeable amount to make some noise.

As we’ve seen, fans spread out in the ground, even small numbers can give teams a boost.

Celtic fans will be balloted to see who gets to this game and who will be watching from the Celtic Pass.

Celtic wrote:

Clearly, we have worked tirelessly in this area, we had pushed for many more fans to be given access and of course we are disappointed that more supporters will not be able to attend.

However, we really look forward to welcoming our fans for the match on Tuesday, as we do on Saturday when we meet Preston North End.

We can assure our supporters we will be doing all we can to work closely with the relevant authorities and welcome our fans back in even greater numbers in the coming weeks.  

Details on match ticket balloting will be shared in the next 24 hours, but in the meantime we ask that you continue to familiarise yourself with our new protocols for reduced capacity matches at Celtic Park – full details of which can be found on the Celtic website here.