IN football, as Mikael Lustig knows, nothing lasts forever.

Just as Barcelona’s tactical tiki-taka was eventually dismantled by Bayern Munich to the tune of 7-0 in a two-legged Champions League tie, and Spain’s World Cup defence was blown to smithereens by the Netherlands one balmy night in Brazil 2014, so the Swede knows too that the combined brains trust of Scottish football management has made it their mission in life to find a blueprint to stop Brendan Rodgers’s all conquering side from playing the way they want to play.

You can throw Steven Gerrard’s Rangers into the mix next season too, but despite sporadic successes against them this season, Celtic haven’t been slowed down just yet.

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And for the record, Lustig simply doesn’t buy into the fact that the Liverpudlian legend’s arrival will automatically be the harbinger of a stronger challenge over the course of a league campaign. The Scandinavian patiently points out that he heard much of the same things prior to the arrival of Pedro Caixinha, a man who he feels arrived with more managerial capital than Gerrard currently has.

“When you have teams who always win – like Barcelona did for a while and Spain did for a while – everyone wants to beat you,” said Lustig in the afterglow of helping Celtic record that historic double treble this weekend. “Of course, they are going to try and find a way to do it.

“That’s the challenge,” he added. “Every year, teams want to beat you, but we are quite confident that if our game plan doesn’t work in a match than we always have a Plan B or a Plan C to try and get there.

“This season we have lost some points, absolutely. But in the main games we have always turned up and proved to everyone that we are still hungry.

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“There are areas where we can try and get better. We don’t want to drop sloppy points, especially at home. So, for sure, we can still get better.”

And as for that supposedly stronger challenge from across the city? “Last year was the same,” said Lustig. “They were bringing a new manager in. On paper or in the media it looks good, but we just focus on ourselves and things are going well so far.

“Yes Steven Gerrard is a bigger name but I think Pedro Caixinha had more routine as a manager, so we’ll see.”

Having marked the clinching of his seventh league title in Scotland by pinching a policeman’s hat, this phenomenally successful Swede celebrated the double treble with one of his countryman, Swedish Football Federation president Karl-Erik Nilsson, who was one of the visiting dignitaries at the game.

It all points to the fact that this 31-year-old’s season still has a distance to run. Having graced both Euro 2012 and Euro 2016 for his nation, this summer will see him appear at a World Cup for the first time.

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“It’s the only time I am going to have a chance to go to the World Cup and play for my country,” says Lustig. “It doesn’t get bigger than that.

“I feel ready to go, absolutely. I have a couple of weeks between now and the first game so it should be no problem. I spoke to Karl-Erik for a bit on Friday and he said he was going to be here, so it was really nice to see him.”

It must be tempting for a player with so many palmares to his name to take stock and reflect upon what he has achieved at Parkhead but this might not be the time to do it. Celtic will look to replenish their squad this summer and, with Cristian Gamboa having failed to make an impact, and Lustig himself not immune from criticism at times this season, right back could be one area that they look at.

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“I think it is a little bit dangerous - if you get satisfied and sit down and spend too much time thinking about what we have done in the past and the trophies we have won,” said Lustig. “When you are playing for Celtic, there is only one way to look and that is forward. You just try and get better all the time.

“Of course, I have won a lot of medals here, but I want more,” he added. “And this club wants more. Hopefully, it is possible.

“That hunger is always there. We sit down as a squad and have our goals in the pre-season and then we fight to go and achieve them.

“We always want to win trophies and we are probably always going to be favourites. But this is football. To win six trophies in a row is something. It doesn’t matter if you are so much better than the other teams, some day you are going to have a bad day or be unlucky. We just keep on going to prove that we are the best.

“Do I dream about nine out of nine? I don’t know. Like I said, we always want to be the best team and win trophies. That’s why we are here. The main thing is what we do at Lennoxtown to try and get better as a team.

‘I enjoyed the final. It was amazing. It is hard to compare with last year when we won it in the last minute. This year, we had a decent first half. There wasn’t great football in the second half but it was good enough.”

However much he has achieved this season, the presence of replica policeman’s hats at Hampden shows that he has caught the imagination. ‘The police have never had so many fans before!” says Lustig with a smile.