NEIL LENNON and his team are in the United States preparing to take on Real Madrid in tomorrow's friendly – but the next time they face the Spanish giants it could be the real deal in the Champions League.

And that must be the target for Celtic after they took a huge step towards reaching the group stage of the competition after progressing past Finnish champions HJK Helsinki.

But before they can allow themselves to dream about playing against the top teams in Europe, they will still have to defeat whatever opposition they are drawn against for the play-off round, although being seeded for that should help.

What this weekend will do is further whet the appetite of everyone connected with the Parkhead club and make them more determined than ever to get back to the highest level in European football.

I'm sure Neil will relish the chance to pit his wits against Jose Mourinho over in the States, but to go up against him at the Bernabeu is a different thing altogether. What a thrill he would get from trying to outfox the Special One.

And for the players, as much as going up against Cristiano Ronaldo must be an extremely scary thought, the fact of the matter is there isn't a player on this earth who wouldn't want to play against one of the best in the world.

You go through the Madrid line-up and it is packed with world-class players. I don't think anyone can dispute they now have one of the best teams in the world after beating Barcelona to La Liga success last term.

Player for player, such a game should not prove to be a contest. Perhaps tomorrow will be slightly different with it being a friendly fixture, but in a Champions League clash it would be a completely harder proposition.

Real, if they were firing on all cylinders, should rip Celtic apart, but it doesn't always work out like that as previous European results prove. And that is why every major club wants to play at that level.

You want to test yourself against the best. Whether that means Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea or Arsenal, that is definitely where you want to be.

Financially, it would be massive for Celtic. When you are talking about bringing in somewhere in the region of £10m to £15m then it could possibly fund the arrival of a player or two as well.

In an ideal world, money would have been provided for Neil to improve his team prior to these qualifying matches. I'm sure he would have felt as though his team would have a much better chance of qualifying had improvements been made.

Like most people, I think they would benefit hugely from bringing in a dominant defender to play at the heart of the defence and definitely another striker.

If Lennon managed to bring in those players it would make such a difference to his young team and they would definitely do well in the group stage of the Champions League.

However, I also understand the financial situation and perhaps it simply isn't possible to spend money on players to take a chance of reaching the group stage just in case results don't go as hoped in the final play-off.

But, for now, Celtic deserve a great deal of credit for progressing to the next stage of their European adventure.

How many times in the past have they gone into such a tie and lost silly goals or paid the price for bad defending and ended up suffering a really disappointing result? It has happened too often.

So I can understand why Neil was so relieved to win 2-0 over in Finland against HJK Helsinki and a lot of the credit must go to the manager.

Firstly, for the organisation and performance on the night. He selected a slightly more conservative starting line-up and it worked. They never conceded a goal and I'm sure they will all take confidence form that. But I think Celtic benefited from a sensible pre-season schedule this summer by staying closer to home.

Results might not have been that great, but what I said at the time is that it was totally driven towards those first three games and it worked – three wins from their first three competitive matches shows that.

But the games Lennon will now be desperate to win will be the play-off matches.

Then, and only then, he might just find himself being presented with another chance to go head-to-head with Mourinho - for Real!