Gordon Strachan will ask Aiden McGeady and Shunsuke Nakamura to conjure up a moment of magic tonight that will allow Celtic to eclipse Barcelona’s galacticos and take a huge step towards the last eight of the Champions League.

The Spanish side flew into Glasgow yesterday with Thierry Henry, Lionel Messi, Samuel Eto’o and Ronaldinho on board for the first leg at Celtic Park of an intriguing last-16 tie. It is only the second time this season that the “fantastic four”, as they have been dubbed by the Catalan media, have been together in the same squad.

However, not only does Strachan refuse to be in awe of Barcelona’s stellar cast list, the Celtic manager believes that two of his own could adorn any firmament. Nakamura was the man whose free kick put Manchester United to the sword, while McGeady took on the Japanese midfield player’s mantle in this season’s Champions League campaign during Nakamura’s long injury absence, and helped to earn this glamorous tie for the Scottish champions.

“Even great players cannot be asked to dominate games for 90 minutes,” Strachan said yesterday. “You can only ask for four or five bits of magic during a game. If you get that, that would be fantastic. Even if Aiden and Shunsuke could not give us that, their workrate is so tremendous that they are still great team players.

“Hopefully they can score a goal for us, but we are also against top defenders, so it will not be easy. People talk a lot about Barcelona’s attackers, but they forget the defenders like Carles Puyol and Gianluca Zambrotta, who are top-class players as well. Messi is one of the greatest players in the world just now. There are a few, such as Henry, Kaká, Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, and they all interchange and take turns at the top.

“There is a lot of talk about Barcelona’s superstars. They are great players and they regularly put on wonderful displays that we watch on television. However, we think we have some good players here, too. We cannot just sit back and hope to hit them on the break. We are not going to be gung go, but we have to give our flair players the platform to play football.”

Strachan believes that exposure to the world’s best talents over the past two Champions League campaigns has paid off for his team. After facing AC Milan four times in the past 12 months, plus Manchester United, Celtic are no longer subservient to any side, particularly at home where they have only lost once in their past 17 Champions League outings.

“We’ve faced great players in Europe,” he said. “My team have come up against people like Kaká, Cristiano Ronaldo, Andrea Pirlo and Paul Scholes. The bottom line is that my players have been able to handle it all. We’re respectful of great players, but we don’t really fear anybody.

“Our training has not been 100 per cent based on how to stop Barcelona — it’s 50-50. We have to look at what we do when we get the ball, and what they do. We need to use the ball wisely and hopefully, if we do that, good players will decide the game.”

Strachan will be without two key players. Andreas Hinkel, the Germany right back, is ineligible because he played for Seville in the competition before his recent £2.1 million move, while Scott Brown, the Scotland midfield player acquired from Hibernian for £4.5 million, is suspended after picking up three cautions in the group phase.

While replacing Brown will simply be a straightforward matter of using Massimo Donati in a more offensive role, with Paul Hartley as the sitting midfield player, the Celtic manager would not divulge just how how he would cope with Hinkel’s absence.

If Strachan opts for the understudy right back, Paul Caddis, aged just 18, will make his Champions League debut just three weeks after making his first domestic appearance. However, Strachan may prefer the experience of Gary Caldwell and choose to utilise the central defender in a postion that he has filled on a number of occasions, using Darren O’Dea to partner Stephen McManus at centre back.

“It’s not a problem to be without Andreas and Scott, it is just part of the job,” Strachan said. “There are positives and negatives about each of the options.”