Malmo biggest and best team in Scandinavia, says Celtic boss Ronny Deila

Malmo – the club he once turned down – and one with a fine European pedigree, come to Glasgow next week with the two teams preparing to go head-to-head over 180 minutes for the right to dine at the top table of European football.

Make no mistake, the Swedes are no mugs, having won back-to-back doubles domestically, and they have already made positive noises about the upcoming play-off double-header.

And Deila, who held talks a few years ago about moving to Malmo, has warned this is as big a test as his club could have landed at this stage.

The Celtic boss said: “In my opinion, now they are the best team in Sweden and also maybe the biggest team in Scandinavia.

“They have over 20,000 at their games – the fans are fantastic and they have a history as well. Roy Hodgson was manager for four years, and they won a lot of league titles around that time. Now obviously they are back again.

“I know their Norwegian coach [Age Hareide] very well. He’s a coach I respect and he’s one of the best coaches we’ve ever had in Norway.

“He’s won titles in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. He’s done it twice in Sweden and has also brought them to the Champions League.

“So it’s a team that’s going to be tough, but also we know how good we can be when we are playing at our best. It’s going to be an interesting game.”

If things had worked out differently, Deila could be the Malmo manager right now instead of preparing to end their Champions League hopes.

He said: “Of course it was a tough decision [not to take the job] because it’s a big club. But it’s a good choice when I see where I am now. It was after I won the title. We were just talking. It was no more than that.

“I wanted to stay in Stromgodset as I knew the Champions League qualifiers were coming up. That was interesting. I felt a lot of loyalty and commitment to them. But it was harder when Celtic came along.”

There are similarities between Celtic and Malmo.

Both clubs have in the past punched above their weight in European competition, with the Hoops, of course, beating Inter Milan in the 1967 final then losing to Feyenoord three years later, while the Swedes lost the 1979 final to Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest.

Okay, that might be a while ago, but you don’t have to be ancient to remember them to be a real force, which also goes for Celtic.

And yet these days they need to get through three qualifying rounds just to reach the competition proper

Malmo may not be the team of the 1970s, but they are a good side, maybe better than Qarabag, and Deila, with his deep knowledge of Swedish football, knows how difficult a test this is going to be.

He said: “It was a great achievement of Malmo last year to come through and beat Salzburg. They did it this year as well, which must be a nightmare for Salzburg – and they did okay in the group stage. They have more experience now than they had last year. It’s going to be a tough match, but we feel we have a good team now and have a good chance.

“Now we are a better team than when we played Salzburg. We’re a much better team than when we played them in that time.

“That, I think, we have shown already. But you have to be good at the right moments and that’s next Wednesday in the Champions League. It’s an exciting draw. Two big clubs with a lot of prestige.

“They’ve changed a little bit. There’s maybe even more intensity in their team and tempo. There’s a little bit of the Norwegian style in them. It’s going to be a physical game and they have some good individuals. I won’t get a chance to go and see them, but we had someone over at the weekend to watch them and we’ll see them this weekend as well.”

A few years ago now, a certain Harald Bratt-bakk scored twice for Rosenberg as Celtic lost in Norway during the first Champions League campaign of the Martin O’Neill era.

By the time Brattbakk left Celtic he was a shell of a man – despite scoring one of the most famous goals in the club’s history in 1998 to secure the Premier League title and prevent Rangers winning 10 in a row – and yet there was something of predictability about him coming back to haunt his old team.

Jo Inge Berget did not hit the heights of Brattbakk during his brief and unforgettable spell at Celtic Park, but Deila does worry that the odd trend of former players scoring against him could happen again.

He said: “It’s a worry that players can come back to haunt you, but I’ve experienced it many times. One time it will happen. You never remember the times that it hasn’t happened.

“We have to be good as a team and continue with what we are doing and do that even better.

“On Sunday against Partick Thistle we played a very good first half and you can see there’s more and more tempo coming into our game. I’m just looking forward to every match now.”