Alistair Johnston shares who really is Celtic’s best penalty taker after Hampden drama

What an afternoon it was for the Celtic fans at Hampden in what is probably one of the best Scottish Cup semi-finals of all time. Well, for the neutral at least.

To go from despair at going behind early to thinking the game was won twice, Aberdeen struck late into regulation and extra time to take the game to penalties.

We all know what happened next but I’m sure I speak for many Celtic fans when I say that when Joe Hart stepped up to take Celtic’s fifth penalty which turned out to be the one that could have won the tie, I was more than slightly surprised.

Now I know Hart has taken penalties before but in this type of high-pressure Game, I was not expecting the experienced stopper to step up.

However, he did, he missed but Hart made up for it by saving Aberdeen’s sudden death penalty to send Celtic into the final.

Why Alistair Johnston was ‘surprised’ at Joe Hart’s miss

The Canadian was reflecting on the shootout and said why he was surprised at his teammate missing the penalty and shared who really is Celtic’s best spot-kick taker.

Johnston said [The Scottish Sun], “He fancies himself as a penalty taker so that will hurt his ego a little that he’s dragged that one. He thinks he’s hit it well.

“He was always down to take the fifth penalty, that was always the plan. They gave us the list straight away.

“After that, it was a case of, ‘Who wants one?’.

“To be fair, that’s all keepers do in training sessions, take penalties into each other.

“I was actually pretty confident when he went up. I thought he was just going to hit it like a goal-kick and rip one.

“I was a little surprised when he went for the corner because in training he probably is our best penalty taker.”

We’ve all seen the videos doing the rounds on social media of Joe Hart taking a penalty and rifling it into the top corner so it’s easy to see why Johnston was surprised the Celtic ‘keeper tried to place it into the bottom corner.

As for Hart, credit to him for having the courage to take one and then recover to make the crucial save to send Celtic into the final.

It’s that kind of leadership that will make him sorely missed when he retires at the end of the season.

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