THE Europa League trophy was so close yesterday Celtic's players could almost touch it.

No Scottish side has ever been able to get their hands on this silver cup on a yellow marble plinth, a product of the Bertoni workshop in Milan and the heaviest of all the cups handed out in the European competitions.

But here it was, at the club's Lennoxtown training base, on its own whistlestop mini European tour, a series of events planned to give fans and local schoolchildren the chance to get near to it.

How close the Scottish champions will ever be again to taking this illustrious piece of silverware into their possession remains to be seen, but if anything is stopping them it won't be superstition.

One by one, the players trooped past it yesterday, afraid to lay their hands on it for fear that it would jinx their chances of doing so for real come the final in Warsaw in May.

"I didn't touch the trophy - it is a superstition," said Jason Denayer ahead of tomorrow's Group D encounter with Red Bull Salzburg at Parkhead.

"Everybody told me, 'Don't touch the trophy, that is bad luck'.

"So I didn't. I wanted to but I couldn't.

"It is not impossible for us to win it outright but we will need to play well.

"We will need to be 100% every game because there are some very good teams in it and in the next round some more very good teams will drop down from the Champions League."

Celtic still require a solitary point against the Austrians tomorrow night - or for Dinamo Zagreb to slip up against FC Astra Giurgiu - to be sure of reaching the last 32, while one of those teams that may parachute into the draw could, of course, be Denayer's parent club Manchester City.

But regardless of what fate awaits the Eastlands side, this 19-year-old Belgian knows all about the history when it comes to Celtic's dalliance with European silverware.

His father Andre, with whom Jason lives in Glasgow, made sure to fill his son in about the finer points of the run to the Uefa Cup final in Seville in 2003, the last time Celtic came close to getting their hands on the cup.

Denayer said: "My dad speaks to me about this.

"They got to the final, right? He tells me how great that was and says it would be great to go back to the final again this year and win the cup. That is the only way I will be able to touch the cup!"

Not all teenage football players living in a foreign country would be keen to cohabit with their dad but a few home comforts have helped Denayer to settle down north of the border.

The defender said: "Scotland feels just like Belgium for me now, there is no difference.

"I spend a lot of time with my dad, watching football games, going to restaurants, doing some shopping and also going to the cinema.

"My dad watches a lot of football and he reads about it too. He is a real football fan, although he only played when he was younger in Belgium.

"But he is the guy who tells me what to do, what is bad and what is good."