Celtic Adventure in Europe (1979 )

I came across to this gem of article written by Craig McCracken. It broadly speaks about the Albanian football during their communist era. But, also reveals some interesting facts when Celtic drew Partizani i Tiranes the Albanian champions at the time. He goes in great details in describing the difficulties of this match where Celtic won against this side 4-2 in aggregate.

I don't know if any of the Celtic supporter in this board is old enough to remember this game, as this match took place in 1979. It would certainly bring back some good memory from this game.

Given that Celtic knew little about the team from Albania, the Scottish press coverage focused instead on the clash of facial hair cultures. McGrain’s beard was a popular and wholly benign Scottish institution, but in Hoxha’s Albania it represented a grave national threat: facial hair was at the top of the country’s banned list, just ahead of long hair, flares and rock music.

Understandably anxious before travelling, the Celtic man later wrote in his autobiography that he would have shaved off his beard had it been demanded of him.

It wasn’t, and Danny and his beard both played in Celtic’s 1-0 defeat. An unusual obsession with the hirsuteness of visiting footballers was to be the least of Uefa’s problems with Albania. Of greater concern was the country’s continual mix of political posturing with downright bloody-mindedness that made them the continent’s problem child for a quarter of a century.

As I said it doesn't exclusively talks about Celtic, it focuses rather on the Albanian footballs during the communist era and how their football has come a long way, to now qualify in Euro 2016.

It makes an interesting read even though it only touches in Celtic and Kilmarnoc playing against Albanian teams during 70s.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/beyond-the-last-man/2015/oct/15/albania-european-football?