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At half-time in Celtic’s eventual 4-1 Europa League play-off defeat by Stuttgart, the focus was on home goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel.

“It looks to me as if he is not expecting shots, which is strange for a goalkeeper,” former Scotland forward James McFadden said. “He’s expecting defenders to stop every shot.

“Teams will be saying there appears to be a weakness to his left-hand side.”

The Denmark shot-stopper had been beaten down to his left by a tame Bilal El Khannouss shot for Stuttgart’s opening goal, before the on-loan Leicester City man added a second with a free header from seven yards out.

And at full-time, attention was on Schmeichel again.

Jamie Leweling’s powerful strike from range – not in the bottom corner – went straight through the 39-year-old goalkeeper for the visitors’ third.

With fans protesting against the club’s board at the start of the game and later ironically cheering Schmeichel making a save, the atmosphere at Parkhead was far from harmonious.

“It’s bitterly disappointing,” former Celtic captain and manager Neil Lennon said of the jeers directed at Schmeichel.

“He had a bad night but it still doesn’t warrant that kind of treatment.”

Thursday night was the latest in a string of perceived errors made by Schmeichel, following Joe Hugill’s looping header for Kilmarnock last weekend and Jonathan Rowe’s effort for Bologna last month.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Celtic closed ranks around their embattled goalkeeper post-match.

“It’s a tough evening for us,” interim manager Martin O’Neill said. “On paper, 4-1 looks pretty poor.

“We were masters of our own downfall in many respects, conceded some poor goals.

“Kasper [Schmeichel] has made some great saves while I’ve been here. This is a collective, there’s no doubt about that.

“We played Feyenoord in a game we probably had to win and he made an unbelievable save, otherwise we wouldn’t be here playing tonight.

“I will think about all sorts of things [before the next game], but Kasper has done really well since I’ve arrived at the football club, in both spells.”

Captain Callum McGregor added: “Everyone makes mistakes.

“Kasper has been amazing since he’s come to the club. He’ll dust that down. We win as a team and lose as a team.

There is evidence that – particularly in Europe – Schmeichel has underperformed this season.

He has conceded 19 goals in nine Europa League matches this term, with a save percentage of just 62.

Celtic’s expected goals on target conceded – the likelihood of an on-target shot resulting in a goal – is 13.96 across those games. In essence, Schmeichel has conceded four goals more than the data would expect him to.

McFadden thinks Celtic’s season could go one way or another based on whether O’Neill decides to stick with Schmeichel or promote understudy Viljami Sinisalo.

“Does the season hinge on it? It might do because if Martin O’Neill opts to stick with Kasper Schmeichel, that’s a big decision. If he opts to change him, that’s a big decision.

“If you feel that’s the decision to be made because you feel more secure at the back, then you make it.”

One man who knows what it feels like to line up between the sticks at Parkhead is BBC Scotland pundit Pat Bonner, who thinks a change should be made.

“My opinion is that Sinisalo should have got a run in the team earlier this season,” he said.

Despite Schmeichel’s mistakes, Lennon also questioned the way Celtic performed as a collective on a night when Stuttgart proved far too strong.

“Celtic lacked a lot of power and intensity, certainly in a defensive capacity,” he said. “It was far too easy, far too stand-offish.

“That is not a Martin O’Neill team or a Martin O’Neill performance.

Ukraine’s Winter Paralympics team will boycott the event’s opening ceremony next month after Russian and Belarusian athletes were invited to compete under their national flags.

On Tuesday, it was announced six Russian and four Belarusian athletes will take part in alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and snowboarding at the Milan-Cortina Games, which start on 6 March.

Both countries had previously been suspended from Paralympic competition after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Belarus an ally of Russia.

In September, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) lifted its ban on athletes from the two countries competing at the Games.

However, the IPC does not govern the six sports contested at the Paralympics and despite the individual bodies, including the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), refusing to lift their own bans, Russia and Belarus won an appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport against FIS.

As a result, athletes have been able to return to FIS competitions and the 10 Paralympians have been awarded bipartite commission invitations to compete in Italy.

Following an announcement that Ukrainian officials would avoid the entire competition, the country’s National Paralympic Committee now says team members will miss the opening ceremony.

The organisation has also made a “demand that the Ukrainian flag not be used”.

The team will still compete in the Games and “fight for the sporting victories of Ukrainian athletes”.

It added: “At this meeting nearly 180 of the IPC’s 211 members were in attendance and voted on this matter. We have to respect the decision of our members who come from all over the world.”

In its statement announcing the boycott, the National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine described the IPC’s decision as “shameful” and that it “completely contradicts the principles” of the Games.

Bipartite commission invites are granted to individual athletes, rather than their international federation, and allow the participation of top athletes “who may not have had the opportunity to qualify through other methods due to extraordinary circumstances”.

The IPC, with the support of international federations – in this case FIS – decides who receives the bipartite slots after receiving recommendations from the federation.

Formula 1 boss Stefano Domenicali has called for calm in the face of criticism from drivers of the sport’s new rules – but said changes would be made if necessary.

F1’s four active world champions – Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris – have all made disparaging comments about the driving experience of the new cars in one way or another.

But Domenicali said in a news conference on Thursday: “We need to avoid overreaction because it’s just the beginning of a new journey, so that’s why I say we need to stay calm.

“And if there is something that is useful and can be implemented straight away, I’ve seen a very open approach by [governing body] the FIA and also the teams sharing their defined data of course with the others.

The biggest rule change in F1 history has seen cars, engines and tyres all subject to change this year, in addition to the introduction of carbon-neutral sustainable fuels.

Drivers have targeted the new engines, which require substantial energy management at all times for optimum performance.

Verstappen said F1 was now “like Formula E on steroids”, while Alonso added “the chef could drive the car” at the speed he was going around some fast corners to harvest energy, and Hamilton claimed the new rules were “ridiculously complex”.

Briton Norris, who initially defended the cars last week as “fun”, said on Thursday he had made those comments to see the reaction and admitted they were “certainly not the purest form of racing”.

Domenicali, the president and chief executive officer of commercial rights holder F1, pointed out the new engine rules were conceived as an attempt to attract new engine manufacturers and had succeeded in attracting Audi and Cadillac, and persuaded Honda to reverse a decision to leave.

“The evolution of that is natural and will become normal,” said the Italian. “I am pretty confident this will evolve in a situation that, at the end of the year, no-one will remember what we are talking about today.

“We don’t have to forget that, with all respect to all these technicalities we are taking about, it is something in the inner business of F1. [For] our 900 million fans, it is not in their business.

“What has to be protected is having great racing, great overtaking opportunities, great challenge to the drivers to show they are best. If these points are not taken, we need to intervene and restart immediately.”

Domenicali added he had been out on the track in pre-season testing in Bahrain on Thursday to see the cars for himself.

F1’s bosses agreed at a meeting of the F1 Commission rules-making body on Wednesday they would assess data from this final test at a further meeting to decide whether action needed to be taken in the short term.

Concern arises from the fact the new engine rules have tripled the power provided by the electrical part of the engine but left the batteries more or less the same size as last year, and removed one of the devices used to recover energy.

This had led to cars that are energy starved and forced the teams to find new ways to harvest sufficient electrical energy to produce the best performance. The rules governing energy recovery are also highly complex.

That in turn has required drivers to perform behaviours that have been described as “counter-intuitive” to optimise lap time.

These include not going flat out put of the final corner before a qualifying lap, lifting and coasting on a qualifying lap, and even not accelerating at full power at the end of a lap because it was more advantageous to use the energy elsewhere.

However, drivers have generally been positive on the handling characteristics of the new cars, and a number of top drivers all told BBC Sport they are still driving to the limit of grip, and driver ability will still be as crucial as ever.

Domenicali said: “Don’t be worried about the energy management. We’re going to solve that. If we need to solve it, by the way.”

He has spent his time in Bahrain having a series of discussions with individual drivers about the sport, including Verstappen.

And he added: “Max wants and does care about Formula 1 more than anyone else. He has a way of putting the point that he wants to say in a certain way.

“Max will be part of the future of Formula 1 and of course it’s very important that we listen to him and all the top drivers that are very important in this sport.”

Domenicali also said F1 was looking at introducing new sporting elements on Fridays, expanding on the approach that led to sprint-race weekends, which feature two qualifying sessions rather than one, and a shorter race on the Saturday in addition to the grand prix on Sunday.

He has already previously said F1 is considering increasing the number of sprint events beyond the current six.

Domenicali added: “Feedback from the fans, from the people attending the track, the promoter, [is] that people want to see action, real action during the three days.

“People want to see already on Friday something that is sporting – qualifying, points, whatever it is.