Alistair Johnston insists Celtic will carry an extra hunger into this season’s Scottish Cup campaign after last year’s final agony at Hampden, which had a treble on the line.
The Canadian international missed the decisive spot-kick at the Celtic end in May as Celtic’s treble hopes were dashed by Aberdeen in a dramatic penalty shoot-out, ending 4-3.
It was a gut-wrenching moment for Johnston and his team-mates, but the right-back believes the pain of defeat will serve as powerful fuel this time around.
Celtic lifted the Premiership and League Cup last season, but the defeat at Hampden left a mark. Johnston sees it as a necessary moment of growth for a squad that remains hungry to dominate on all fronts.
Speaking ahead of the new season, the right-back offered an honest reflection on the semi-final loss and how it has sharpened focus within the dressing room.
“If you never lose, then you kind of forget what the feeling of winning really is,” he said to RecordSport. “I want to sit here and say that I want to win every single trophy. That is the case.
“But, at the same time, when you do lose one you probably come back with a bit more of a fire in your belly to go out there and really kick on that following year. So I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing.
“It is in the past. Obviously, we would have loved to have won a treble. It didn’t happen. But now that gives us all the extra motivation to go out there and try and make it happen this year.
“So that’s a really positive thing that comes out of it. I think you need to try and find what are the learnings and the growths from that match so we can learn from it and make sure that doesn’t happen again. But at the same time, that’s football. You’re not going to win every single match.
“We’d love to do that. So I think that, you know, going into this year, it really does just kind of add a little bit of extra fire to everyone that’s in this. You want to put things right. Ideally, to have our trophies back is kind of the plan.”
He won a treble in his first season at Celtic, and now has multiple winners’ medals hanging up in his cabinet.
The Hoops will be setting out to add three more this season, with another run in the Champions League, but to do that, they must get through the qualifiers this month and add some depth and quality before the window slams shut.
