As Gordon Strachan stood on the touchline thumping his chest after Celtic’s remarkable Champions League resurrection, the first thought was that he had cardiac trouble. Who among the 60,000 people inside Celtic Park on Wednesday night did not have a reading that leapt off the scale?

The Celtic manager, though, was not taking emergency action. His animated behaviour was simply his way of making sure that Mircea Lucescu lost nothing in translation. The Shakhtar Donetsk coach was telling Strachan and the Celtic players as they came up the tunnel that they were “lucky” that Massimo Donati’s injury-time goal had snatched a crucial group D victory, which now allows the Scottish champions to see the last 16 appearing on the horizon.

Strachan’s response was to beat his chest, just south of the Celtic badge on his tracksuit. Not luck, just heart. And lots of it. Any group of players who can produce this sort of comeback, as Celtic repeatedly have in Strachan’s reign, have something special in their DNA. They overcame the sight one of their colleagues, John Kennedy, being rushed off to hospital. If the Scotland defender’s prognosis is not yet known, Celtic’s certainly is: one point next Tuesday against AC Milan at the San Siro will guarantee qualification in second place behind the holders.

“In terms of spirit, we are as good as anyone,” Strachan said, once his blood pressure had subsided. “In different games we have had to think, really play well technically but, for sheer guts, that’s as good as it gets. We achieved the win with heart and determination.”

Stephen McManus, the Celtic captain, concurred with that. Shakhtar were not the first to suffer against a side who know how to go deep into stoppage time and deliver the killer blow. Milan, Heart of Midlothian and Inverness Caledonian Thistle could empathise with the Ukrainians.

“It shows great character from the team,” McManus said. “It is not just once or twice. Since the manager has come to the club, we have scored quite a few late goals. It says a lot about our spirit and the lads never seem to know when they are beaten. With the way the group has gone, it was important that we defeated Shakhtar.”

Celtic have an immediate opportunity to take advantage of the success. The final fixtures in group D have been moved forward to next week because of Milan’s participation in the World Club Championship in Japan. Scott McDonald, who scored the late winner when Milan were in Glasgow, can hardly wait to get out on to the pitch at the San Siro Stadium.

And while the Australia forward knows that Celtic’s destiny is in their own hands, he feels that Shakhtar will face a Benfica side who are hardly going to roll over in Donetsk. The Portuguese team’s 1-1 draw with Milan in Lisbon keeps their own campaign alive. They cannot reach the last 16 but a win in Donetsk would allow Benfica to finish third and parachute into the Uefa Cup.

“Now there is real pressure on Shakhtar to get a result against Benfica,” McDonald said. “That is not going to be easy because they had a great result against Milan and now still have a chance to stay in Europe if they can defeat Shakhtar. That’s a good thing from our perspective, but we have to go to Milan and do our job. We will not look too much at that game. We’ll concentrate on Milan and hope we can get the result we need.”

Celtic, though, have managed just one draw in their 14 away games in the Champions League group phase over the past six years. That came in the Nou Camp, of all places, against Barcelona in 2004-05. “We were so close in Lisbon,” McDonald said. “It was not so long ago that we got a draw against Spartak Moscow in the qualifiers, so it is within us. We have been close many times, but we are not going to go there looking for a draw, we’re going to go looking for a win.”

Strachan was grateful his team did not allow their own blood pressure to rise in response to entire game littered with duplicity. Lucescu’s team repeatedly required treatment for nonexistent injuries, and conned a weak referee in Bernard Layec. That stoppage time added on by the Frenchman allowed Donati to repeat what Jiri Jarosik had done right at the end of the first half, when he cancelled out Brandão’s early opener.

“People might say we were lucky, but that does not matter to us,” McDonald said. “They tried to play ‘games’ and it is important to make sure that you keep your head and not let it get it you. It’s about keeping concentration and making sure you play your football.”

Ironically, Lucescu, a former Inter Milan coach, is now looking for a favour from rivals who once treated him with disdain. Milan are almost certain to rest their top players when Celtic come. They have the World Club Championship to think of and if anything underlined where the priorities of the rossoneri support now lie, it is in the blunt statistic of ticket sales: Milan have sold more than 75,000 tickets for the weekend encounter with Juventus, and just 27,000 for the visit of Celtic.

McManus, though, will be vigilant. “We’ve played Milan a few times, but every one is a special occasion because you are playing against the best in the world,” the captain said. “We know that it is going to be a hard, hard job. I wish it was as easy as saying that we just have to go to the San Siro for a point. These guys are the champions of Europe and we will need to be at our very best to get a result.”