Magic night at Celtic Park gave us the very best of football

The old idea of a great European night, under floodlights and in front of thousands, remains one of the most thrilling events in football, just rare enough to make it special but frequent enough to keep you coming back for more. With the many mismatches and dead rubbers of the Champions League, it can feel like these nights have been diminished a little, but on Wednesday night Celtic and Manchester City presented a pulsing, exhilarating example of the genre.

What a game. What a game. Modern football can sometimes feel like an exhibition of athleticism rather than skill: sometimes the two are combined, but sometimes that doesn't matter. This was both, a game that was played at such a pace as to be thrilling enough without much subtlety, but came with enough moments of quality to satisfy all relevant urges. Think the flowing Celtic move for their second, or Raheem Sterling's remarkable clarity of thought to equal that.

Before the game, it was tempting to think of this as a tussle of two managers, the European master with titles aplenty under his belt, and the man who aspires to be that, and thinks one day he will achieve those heights. If it was a tedious game it would have been Brendan Rodgers v Pep Guardiola as much as Celtic v Manchester City, but mercifully it wasn't that. Not at all.

For the first 10 minutes, Celtic were a force of nature, blasting City in the face like an industrial fan. They went straight for the visitors, were 1-0 up and could have been more, attacking with such ferocity that you were reminded of Rodgers' Liverpool team that nearly won the league in 2014. In that season they often destroyed the will of opponents in the opening stages, relentlessly attacking from the off, and at times on Wednesday you got half a reminder that Rodgers can, despite his frequent nonsense, be a genuinely excellent manager. “How we pressed the game, the mistakes that created, we deserve great credit,” said Rodgers afterwards, emphasising how impressed he was with his side's “aggression”. That start was no accident of over-hyped players on a big occasion, it was his plan all along.

Fernandinho scuffed an equaliser, and reality landed back on Celtic Park for a short spell, but that was only a short breather. Celtic took the lead twice more, and twice more City equalised. You thought it would be impossible for either side to keep up the frantic pace of those opening minutes, but somehow they both managed it, barring a spell with about 15 minutes to go as both sets of players seemed to gather themselves for the final push, like long-distance runners saving a little energy for a sprint finish.

On the touchline it was almost as frantic. Rodgers, in club-issue cagoule and slightly-too-tight tracksuit bottoms, paced around his technical area, but casually, hands buried deep in pockets when not taking notes. He sort of resembled a secretly enthusiastic student PE teacher, his desire to hop around in excitement just overtaken by that to appear cool, for the kids.

Guardiola, if you want to stretch the school analogy to breaking point, is more a demanding headmaster, in a permanent state of exasperation in his nicely-cut suit, hands on hips and constantly frustrated with the efforts of his boys. Never satisfied, it's sometimes impossible to believe he can ever be relaxed enough to achieve happiness. It was a bit like watching a man develop an ulcer in front of your very eyes. At one point late in the game, as a City attack petered out and the ball sailed out of play towards him, Guardiola pulled his fist back as if to thump it. If he'd gone through with the swing, he might well have punched a hole in the ball.

In 'Pep Confidential', his book about Guardiola's first season at Bayern Munich, Martí Perarnau noted a number of times that when the Catalan doesn't quite have the answer, or a game isn't quite going as he foresaw, he scratches his head a lot. On Wednesday, he very nearly carved a crater in that smooth pate of his.

After the game Guardiola almost seemed to make a point of being suitably reverent to Celtic, emphasising their European history in comparison to City's relative inexperience on that score. Indeed, while one might have expected Guardiola to be disappointed at not extending his 100% start to the season, missing out on a chance to equal Tottenham's 1960/61 record of 11 wins in a row (“I'm pretty sure they knew they weren't going to win every game,” he said when asked about the psychological impact of – gasp – drawing a game), he seemed relatively pleased with the point.

Although one team started with Raheem Sterling on the wing and the other Scott Sinclair, Guardiola's satisfaction despite not winning probably tells you plenty about how things panned out. “It was a great effort to recover the situation,” he said of City's treble comeback.

One of the benefits of the Champions League group stage is that games like this can just happen, and everyone can enjoy them, without being excessively perturbed at not winning. Both managers recognised that something valuable came from both sides: City their resilience, remembering what to do after going behind and being hit hard, and Celtic that they can, on occasion, still compete with the best. “City have absolutely destroyed teams,” said Rodgers, “but hopefully our performance tonight shows this is a huge club.”

What a game, though. What a game.