THE road to Milan’s San Siro may still be a far off land for many teams at the minute, but as the draw for the first two qualifying rounds of the Uefa Champions League takes place on Monday, Celtic will be watching and waiting.

The planning for Celtic’s qualifying campaign has been cooking for months.

Way before the season had come to a close, Ronny Deila was already plotting his way through the three game challenge of making it into the group stages of the tournament.

On Monday, there will be an indication of where that journey will begin.

Celtic do not enter the competition until the second qualifying round, but the draw for the first and second qualifying phase of both the Europa League and the Champions League will be done at the same time.

Effectively what that means for the Parkhead side is that they will be tuning into the opening qualification phase to discover who exactly they will be up against.

Monday’s draw will give them a rough idea, but there will not be a definitive answer until 8th July when the first round is settled.

In all probability, Celtic’s first qualifier – Uefa will regionalise the draw – will come from Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland or Iceland.

That could mean a game against Welsh champions The New Saints, a meeting with Crusaders of Belfast, Dundalk or Icelandic outfit Stjarnan.

The New Saints also play in green-and-white hoops and although Celtic would be expected to prevail against the Welsh side comfortably, they are the highest ranking team Ronny Deila's team could face at this stage.

Managed by Craig Harrison, the Welsh club – whose ground holds just 3,000 – completed a domestic Treble last season.

Stjarnan are the current Icelandic champions but are currently sitting mid-table. The club are famed for their wacky, well-orchestrated goal celebrations, but the one problem they could pose Celtic is the fact that their season is well underway.

While Deila’s side would be expected to win the two-legged affair, the fact they will be sharper and fitter may cause one or two moments of consternation for the Parkhead side.

Similarly, Stephen Kenny’s Dundalk are in the midst of their season in the Republic of Ireland.

They currently top the league, but would be a decent team for Celtic to start off an adventure that they hope will lead all the way to the group stages.

This season’s tournament is the most lucrative that has ever been on offer, making the jackpot for landing a golden ticket into the group stages particularly significant.

A conservative estimate would wager that at least £20million would be the reward for getting there – but this is a figure that could be bumped up considerably depending on opposition and further television cash.

Yet, while Deila will expect that his side will prevail against whoever they come up against in their first qualifier – games that will be played on either July 14 or 15 – the third qualifier will be harder.

It is at this stage that the Scandinavian teams enter the fray, but the permutations of the draw get far tougher to guess.

Celtic are guaranteed to be seeded in the third qualifying round, but so are the three teams who come in at that stage. It does mean that Celtic will avoid the likes of Basel, Salzburg or Viktoria Plzen.

The likelihood is that it could be a team like HJK Helsinki whom Celtic last played in season 2012/13 or a return to Poland to face Lech Poznan who beat Legia Warsaw to the title this season.

The name of Partizan Belgrade will send a shiver up the spine of any Celtic fan old enough to remember 1989, but they could be potential opponents at the third qualifying stage.

This draw is not regionalised so Celtic could face a journey anywhere. Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Garabag Agdam of Azerbaijan, Molde from Deila’s Norwegian homeland or Midtjylland of Norway could all be potential challengers.

If Celtic are still on their feet by the time these games are completed in the first week of August then the final round of qualifiers is where it gets phenomenally difficult.

What will help the Parkhead side this season is the fact they are moving through on the Champions route, meaning they will avoid the likes of Manchester United, Valencia, Ajax and Bayern Leverkusen.

However, Dinamo Zagreb - previously Croatia Zagreb - stopped Celtic reaching the group stage of the competition back in 1998 while Maribor could also be in wait at this point – who put Celtic to the sword last season.

The likes of APOEL Nicosia, BATE Borisov and Ludogrets Razgrad are in here as well, all three of whom experienced Champions League group stage football last season.

These final play-off matches take place on August 18 or 19, and August 25 or 26.

If Celtic progress to this point they may well feel like cracking open the bubbly and bringing out a DVD.

It is road fraught with difficulty and challenges but the rewards for successfully negotiating it are eye-watering.