There was little joy for Celtic's internationals on Thursday night, with two players in action, and both suffered defeats. Kasper Hogh was in Nations League action for Denmark, while Liam Scales represented Ireland in the same competition.
Denmark fell just short of Norway, who won 3-2 thanks, in part, to a brace from Erling Haaland. Hogh started on the bench and came on for Rasmus Hojlund with eight minutes to go, but he wasn't able to find an equaliser, and the score remained 3-2, taking Norway to the top of the group on goals scored. The other result in that group was Portugal beating Wales 1-0.
SportsStar gave Hogh a 6/10 for his cameo, which is pretty much standard for a player coming off the bench late on.
Elsewhere, Ireland suffered a pretty embarrassing defeat to Kosovo away from home in their Nations League opener. Vedat Muriqi scored the winning goal with seven minutes remaining, and Scales came off with just two minutes to go.
The Celtic defender again found himself playing on the left, where he has often deputised for the Bhoys, although he actually played further forward in a wing-back role for his nation.
RTE gave Scales a 4/10 for his performance and reasoned: "The decision to start Scales at left wing-back will likely be a conversation that fans will be debating over the next few days. He sent in one good searching cross in the opening 15 minutes which the goalkeeper fumbled and made a bit of a mess of but bar that he didn't offer a lot."
Ireland will be very disappointed with the result, while Austria won 3-1 against Israel in the group's other game.
Ireland boss Heimir Hallgrímsson said after the game: "(Kosovo are) a good team, momentum with them, crowd with them, and to be honest, they deserve the win.
“There was nothing that we didn’t know about how they would play, where their threats would be, but (it was) an off day for a lot of our players, and (it is) a tough place to come to if you have an off day, so a deserved win for Kosovo.
“We were the team that needed to defend today and didn’t connect in possession or passes, not as sharp as we have done. We have to quickly find out the reason that we had an off day. We can all do better than we did today.
“It is a two-day turnaround for the next one, so we better be quick…and do better than this versus Israel. They are probably in the same position as us (having lost).”
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