The UEFA Champions League Final takes place on Saturday, May 27th, and Glasgow Celtic will not be participating.
Brendan Rodgers' men will have to settle for a likely domestic treble and an unbeaten league season as Real Madrid and Juventus made it to the final hurdle of a competition in which Celtic were eliminated at the group stage.
In those six group games, however, Celtic captain Scott Brown managed to pull off so many interceptions that he is leading some of Europe's most elite players who have played twice the amount of games he has in the competition.
Sky Sports shone light on the unlikely statistic after airing his views from a pre-match press conference and pointed out that Brown started more games and played more minutes than any other Celtic outfield player.
The table for interceptions looks great with Scott Brown towering over the likes of Tiemoue Bakayoko, who played 12 games including the semi-finals against Juventus and will likely be sold for £50m+ this summer, and Diego Godin.
And it's not a photoshop either, the stat was discussed on air. 7 of them came away to Borussia Monchengladbach.
Going into the final, both Luka Modric and Casemiro of Real Madrid are the biggest threat to this statistic, as they would need four interceptions to pull level with the man from Dunfermline.
What does this tell us? Well, aside from the obvious fact that Scott Brown is the best defensive midfielder in all of Europe, it says that Celtic had to defend so much in those six group games that Brown was able to rack up a competition-high amount of interceptions in the first stage.
The real learning is somewhere in the middle.
Scott Brown scooped the Ladbrokes player of the season award, and as Brendan Rodgers accepted the manager's equivilant he touched on how Brown was able to obtain such an unlikely stat.
It was pretty clear early on when I met him that he was top class in his outlook. He hasn't let up.
He has been absolutely sensational in how he has led the team and how he's taken on the football idea that we've tried to impose on the team - his tactical positions to get on the ball, the variety so that he can move freely to create space for himself.
He presses with a real aggression, he anticipates and he blocks and he doesn't need to be jumping in. That has been consistent, whether it's League Cup, the league or Champions League.
He's had a fantastic season, that's for sure, and we're sure there will be a number of Celtic fans watching the Champions League final and hoping that the pass completion percentage for Juve is in the 90s.
[H/T: ThickAccent.com]
