Celtic verticality leaves Chelsea and the press box stumped as 3 truths emerge from tasty tour thrillers – USA diary

Celtic's America trip has been an education. We’ve learned there is still a huge Hoops fanbase Stateside, that Brendan Rodgers’ side are looking pretty tasty and the fact that eating US grub for nearly a fortnight ends up in you needing a new wardrobe.

We’ve also learned a few fancy new football phrases out here. At the Chelsea game at Notre Dame on Saturday, the press box had televisions showing the ESPN coverage. The commentators were superb and pretty knowledgeable about the Scottish champs. But they lost us a few times. They talked about Celtic’s ‘preseason staircase of fitness’ and the club’s desire for 'Champions League acclimation’, which we think was building up fitness and getting more comfortable in Europe.

But the real cracker was when they hailed Celtic’s ‘verticality’. Verticality?! One of the boys in the press box had to run it through one of these fancy AI apps to find out what it meant. HAL 9000 came back with: “Verticality in soccer is a tactical game style that involves playing the ball in the air to move it forward and into more advanced areas of the field. The goal of verticality can be to change the angle of attack, move the ball past a pressuring opponent, or create scoring opportunities for teammates.”

Ah. We used to call that Route One. It was a decent point though. Celtic had clocked Chelsea playing a high line and the Hoops took advantage with balls over the top to Kyogo.

I'm not sure the phrase will catch on in Scotland, mind you. Good luck to anyone trying to drop it into the conversation in Glasgow boozers. After a few bevvies some folk might end up verticality challenged.

The same could be said for some of the fans in the States. The bars outside the stadium the other night were going