Martin O’Neill has targeted qualifying for the knockout stages of the Europa League.

The Celtic boss was asked ahead of this evening’s clash with Benfica about his objective for the tournament, having previously tempered expectations at the weekend.

Celtic haven’t won a European knockout tie since 2004. By the time they have to win another, they will have waited 23 years. O’Neill was the last manager to achieve this.

Could he be the next to achieve it? Discussing the possibility ahead of the game in Lisbon, he stressed the difficulty of making it out of the League Phase before anything else.

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Asked about his ambition, O’Neill said: “First of all, we’re going to try and qualify for the knockout stages for a start. We did that last year, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

“We’ve got another seven games in which to try and get enough points to qualify. So that would be the ambition for us. We can still do it. We lost our opening game. You don’t want to lose the game. We could easily have beaten Ferencvaros early on in proceedings. We’ve got two or three great chances that we should have scored. We didn’t do. Of course, that’s a setback.

“The game was a setback during the course of that week. This is a difficult game for us. They’ll [Benfica] be one of the favourites to win the competition. But we have games in which to get the points. It seems to get tougher for Scottish teams. But at the end of it all, let’s go and compete.

“It’s only a couple of years ago since they nearly beat Bayern Munich. So it’s been up and down, hasn’t it? I think what you want to do is play really well in this game, if you can. It’ll be difficult for us, but we’re capable of doing it.

“And we will cause them problems during the course of the game. We certainly will do it. Benfica themselves are one of the favourites here. We’ve got a task on our hands. But at the end of the day, it depends how it’s taken. Somebody asked me about prioritising, but I think when we set out every single season, the league is really, really important.

“European football, I’ve often said this before, is a diet you want to be feeding off. You really do. And it gets tougher every single year. It might not be during my time, but they will definitely do it. It’s a case of getting recruitment right.”