BRENDAN RODGERS last night admitted Celtic should be nowhere near the Champions League given the financial disparity between his club and their opponents but tipped his reborn players to make history in Barcelona.
Captain Scott Brown is expected to be fit for the Group C opening game in the Nou Camp and Rodgers knows he will need his best players at their top form if his side are to avoid what many believe is an inevitable defeat.
Celtic are rated at 33-1 with some bookmakers to win in Catalonia and while the manager was not going to argue with those odds, he was quietly confident that his ever-improving group of players can pull off what would be a remarkable result if they were to take even a point.
“I don’t think anyone gives us a cat in hell’s chance of doing anything, and I respect that and understand that totally,” said Rodgers. “If you look at the powers of the three other teams (Barcelona, Manchester City and Borussia Moenchengladbach) and the experiences and the finances we shouldn’t really be on the same pitch as them, that’s the brutal honesty of it.
“But that’s not how football works. Celtic is a huge club. We don’t have the resources of others in this competition and at this level but it shouldn’t stop us believing that we can get a result. I think in this stadium here if you can keep the score at 0-0 for 15, 20 minutes there is an anxiety that can appear because of the level of what they are used to seeing and goalscoring.
“So if you can get over that first phase of the game you can have a big chance. But of course it’s easier said than done. They test you physically and move you around the pitch but we are here to try and get a result, that’s the message.”
The defeat in Gibraltar, his first competitive game as the manager, must now feel almost funny to Rodgers who clearly has got the players buying into his philosophy. They are not only playing good football but they are also feeling better about themselves, which is why the manager could not write off the chances of a historic Celtic night.
“It’s just giving the players the confidence to let them know that they are actually human beings,” he said. “I have worked very, very closely with one of the players (Luis Suarez)who is deemed the best – and is – so I know mentally what players at that level think and, hopefully, I can help my players in their minds in terms of what the player at that level operate and work.”
Rodgers did accept that some of his players may feel a little overawed when they line-up in the tunnel opposite Lionel Messi and the other world class footballers.
“There is always going to be apprehension,” he said. “There is always going to be that little feel around a game here. If you are Kieran Tierney, for example. He’s 19 years of age, it’s only natural.
“Coming from Motherwell, then into the Nou Camp, you can’t believe it. After the biggest result of his life last weekend, now he’s up against Messi.
“However, win, lose or draw here, when we get back, we’re a better team. That’s the beauty of this. That’s why you do your work to qualify to get in here.
“The more exposure you can have to these sorts of games, the better player you become. The better it is for your club team, your country. The more games you have at it and the more good players you face, it makes you better.
“It drip feeds confidence into your game, you learn things that you can put into your game. Then you can put it in to become better.
"But what I’ve seen from my team so far is a hunger and desire to do their best in every training session and match. We have to come up with a plan which can get us a positive result.”
The former Celtic striker Chris Sutton described this game as a freebie in that the result was not that important and Rodgers would instead be looking for a performance rather than points.
It is not how the manager viewed the challenge which awaits his team this evening.
Rodgers said: “It’s not a free game for me. We want to get a result. We understand the difficulty of getting a result here, especially off the back of the intensity of the Rangers game, but we are not here just to be passengers.
If you want that easy-oasy life, this is not the place to be. Make no mistake, we will do everything we can against a real crack team to try and get a result.”
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