This opening group D affair in the Champions League was dead for Celtic before the game had scarcely come to life last night. Two goals inside the opening seven minutes for Shakhtar Donetsk left Celtic in a pitiful state, a trauma from which they rarely looked like recovering amid the southern coalfields of Ukraine.

In truth, Celtic looked fairly poor all night, and hardly can Gordon Strachan’s team have failed so badly at such basic tasks as corners and free kicks inside a single 90 minutes. Yet all this is to take nothing away from Shakhtar, a team currently romping clear in the Ukrainian league and with skill and imagination aplenty.

Indeed, it was almost the baffling geometry of Mircea Lucescu’s team’s play which did for Celtic on the night. The Scottish champions could find no answer to repeated and varied surges from their hosts, whose two-goal lead inside the opening minutes came while Celtic quickly came to look petrified. It would be stretching it to say that Strachan’s men mounted any form of a fightback.

Yet again Artur Boruc proved himself a heroic and agile goalkeeper. Had it not been for the sprawling Pole, frankly, this would have been a drubbing for Celtic, and quite possibly a humiliation. At various stages of the night Boruc threw himself about his goal to keep the Ukrainians — and in particular their two strikers Cristiano Lucarelli and Brandão — at bay.

Last night’s first half, taken in its entirety, was a wonderful display of creative football by Shakhtar, who forensically sliced Celtic open with a series of raids from midfield. You could almost see Gary Caldwell and Stephen McManus quake in their boots in Celtic’s defence as black-and-orange shirted figures ghosted past them.

The coaching manual on these occasions says, keep it tight and safety-first for the opening 15 minutes, yet Celtic evidently had forgotten this basic tenet. Strachan’s men were undone by an early calamity, if that is justly what you could call conceding two goals inside the first seven minutes. It must have galled Strachan to see his defence crumble like this.

The heart of this Shakhtar team was their Brazilian midfield of Fernandinho, Ilsinho and Jadson, aged 22, 21 and 23 respectively, all of them a symbol of the Ukrainians’ policy of scouring South America for young talent.

After just five minutes McManus appeared to get into a mess trying to control a Scott Brown pass yards from his own 18-yard line, leaving Brandão, yet another Brazilian, to seize possession and home in on Boruc. The big Polish goalkeeper dived helplessly as the ball was swept past him. Then Lucarelli got in on the act. This enigmatic striker, soon to be 32, has turned his back on his native Italy to come to join Mircea Lucescu in Donetsk, not least because of this lure of playing in the Champions League. So there was something a little symbolic in the manner that Celtic gifted Lucarelli and Shakhtar their plunder in the opening 45 minutes.

Celtic were once again back-pedalling just two minutes after conceding when Razvan Rat’s cross flew across the face of Boruc’s goal. The favourite to reach the ball was Lee Naylor, yet in came Lucarelli from behind him to make the header and send the ball past Boruc for Shakhtar’s second.

Aiden McGeady, however, was sacrificed in a 4-4-2 system designed to stifle this skilful and extremely fluid Shakhtar midfield. The upshot, however, was a match shaped not so much by tactics as basic human error.

Even having gone two goals down, Celtic were lucky not to be three adrift before 20 minutes were out. From the centre of the park Fernandinho and Jadson were streaming into the heart of Celtic’s half, aided by Razvan Rat, an overlapping left back, and Brandão once more evaded defenders to slip his shot past Boruc from the angle. Fermin Martinez, the far-side Spanish linesman, mercifully for Celtic flagged for offside, yet TV replays seemed to suggest he got the decision wrong.

It was hard to believe that Celtic could be so feeble, exhibited in a series of poorly-executed corners and crosses all of which caused no danger. It took Celtic fully 70 minutes to threaten Andriy Pyatov’s goal, save for a Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink header from a Shunsuke Nakamura free kick which had looped over Pyatov’s bar in the opening half.

The Scottish champions were forced to regroup after all the early carnage. Hartley was withdrawn from the right into the centre of midfield, with Mark Wilson pushing forward in an attempt to wrest the initiative from Shakhtar. But there was such variety and breadth to Shakhtar’s play that Celtic were often left looking gormless.

Celtic had to do something, and both Aiden McGeady and Chris Killen were introduced to the fray, but to no avail. In the final ten minutes the visiting team at last managed a few forays upfield, but Boruc was rarely a man of leisure at the other end.

Shakhtar Donetsk (4-1-3-2): A Pyatov - D Srna, O Kucher, T Hübschman, R Rat – M Lewandowski – Ilsinho, Jadson (sub: N Castillo, 64min), Fernandinho (sub: I Duljaj, 85) – C Lucarelli (sub: O Gladkiy, 69), Brandão. Substitutes not used: B Shust, O Gay, O Bielik, V Yezerskiy. Booked: Srna.

Celtic (4-4-2): A Boruc – M Wilson, G Caldwell, S McManus, L Naylor – S Nakamura (sub: A McGeady, 64), M Donati, S Brown, P Hartley – S McDonald (sub: C Killen, 67), J Vennegoor of Hesselink (sub: M Zurawski, 84). Substitutes not used: M Brown, E Sno, J Kennedy, D O’Dea. Booked: Brown.

Referee: A Undiano Mallenco (Spain).