Celtic defender Mikael Lustig has called upon Brendan Rodgers’ side to do the hard work on Wednesday night when the Parkhead side will host AEK Athens in the UEFA Champions League first-leg, third round qualifier.

The Swede has missed the opening two qualification rounds against Alashkert and Rosenborg due to his involvement at the FIFA World Cup after he been given an extended break but played his first 90 minutes of the season on Saturday as Celtic overcame Livingston at Celtic Park and is expected to start the game against AEK.

Lustig has conceded that ideally Celtic would be away from home for the opening leg of the tie but has called upon his team-mates to engineer a result that will give the Parkhead side a decent cushion to take with them to Athens. The Greek side have not started their competitive season yet, something that Lustig believes can work to Celtic’s favour.

“I think we are more fit now than this time last year,” said Lustig. This year is harder than before. To have Athens in this round, usually you would get that team in the last round. We hope that they feel it is a test for them. We feel strong. Especially in the home game against Rosenborg, we played good football. If we can get up to that level, we have a good chance.

“Usually you want the second leg here, but if you are at home in the first leg you just need to go out there and try to take a lead into the second leg. We have played a lot of great games in the first leg, when we have almost finished the tie. So hopefully we can do something similar.

“We have played five games so we are hopefully up to speed. We are going to make sure that we put them under pressure straight away.

“We know it is an important game on a European night but if we turn up like we used to do then it should be good.”

Lustig, meanwhile, has revealed that it took him a while to process Sweden’s exit from the World Cup. The full-back was suspended for the quarter-final tie as England progressed at Sweden’s expense.

“It was hard,” he admitted. “I had been away and was together with Sweden for 47 days so the first couple of days was quite hard. You didn’t know what to think or where you were. I just tried to hide. It was really big in Sweden so the first few days were a bit blurry and then I went to Greece with my family for a week to get a rest.

“It was amazing, all the love we got from Sweden and going there and doing well for your country is special. When Germany scored to make it 2-1 [second group game] we thought it was almost over but then it was good because we needed to win against Mexico and suddenly we were topping our group. It meant we didn’t need to face Brazil and got Switzerland so it worked out really well.

“It was really hard to watch that game [against England]. We didn’t play the best football. It was tough but now I have had three or four weeks off and I just feel proud.”