Source: Team_Talk
Hoops ace excited by Europa League
The Parkhead side were knocked out of the Champions League in the qualifying round by Arsenal and will continue their continental journey in the Europa League.
To add a little salt to Celtic's wounds, they checked in at Glasgow airport on Tuesday morning ahead of their trip to Israel to face Hapoel Tel-Aviv in their Group C opener at the same time as Old Firm rivals Rangers, who jetted out to Stuttgart for their Champions League opener against the German side.
However, McDonald is just happy to be still involved in European football after a scare against Dinamo Moscow in their first Champions League qualifier where defeat would have seen them out of Europe altogether.
Tony Mowbray's side overturned a first-leg deficit in the return game in Moscow to earn a tie against the Gunners which guaranteed them at least a bite at the inaugural Europa League, where they are in a section that also contains Bundesliga leaders Hamburg and old foes Rapid Vienna.
"To be honest, I'm quite happy just to be playing European football," the Australia international said.
"At one stage, if we hadn't beat Dinamo Moscow, we would have had nothing.
"That would have been a huge disappointment for me, having to watch European football from my armchair.
"But we are at least kept busy now and we haven't got time to think about the Champions League.
"We have to be go out in the Europa League and be successful and that's what's on our minds, not the disappointment of not getting to the Champions League."
The former Motherwell striker, however, held back on making any rash promises about how much progress the Parkhead side can make in this competition.
"One step at a time," he said.
"First and foremost we have to be looking at getting out of the group.
"Anything less than that would be a failure at Celtic, of course.
"We are looking to do that and from then on in it's important to take it one step at a time and not get carried away.
"To be totally honest I don't know a great deal about them but we will have a few meetings before the game, have a look at them and how they play and see where we can get at them."
