PEDRO Caixinha admits today's Old Firm showdown against Celtic in the William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final is the biggest match of his career. The 46-year-old led his Mexican side Santos Laguna to three titles and the final of the Concacaf Champions League and has also had spells in the hot-seat at Leiria and Nacional in Portugal and Al-Gharafa in Qatar, but nothing comes close to the interest he has had back home as he prepares to manage a side in the Glasgow derby for the first time.
"For sure, it is definitely the biggest," Caixinha said. "In Mexico we had a lot of big games, semi-finals, finals, even when we won the Champion of Champions, and the Concacaf championships when we got into the World Cup of Clubs, this is going to be the biggest one for sure."
Fittingly, considering he hopes to take his place in history today, part of his preparations included a stroll through the Museum of Scotland on a trip to Edinburgh on a rare couple of days off.
"I went with the family to Edinburgh," he said. "It was my third time there, the second time with my wife and the first with my kids. Some guys were coming up to me and saying 'football' and I was saying 'sorry I don't get you' or 'it must be someone which looks like me, not me'."
Brendan Rodgers, meanwhile, believes Celtic will still have had a “brilliant season” were they to lose this afternoon. Defeat would end the Parkhead club’s attempts to complete a first treble since 2001 and to go through the domestic campaign unbeaten but Rodgers feels that shouldn’t detract from what has already been achieved in his first year.
“The perception for me [on what they have achieved] is pretty clear, whatever the result is,” he said. “We have had a brilliant season, that's my feeling on it. There is lots of room for improvement but if I look at the landmarks over the course of the season in terms of [him] newly coming into the club and achieving a Champions League qualification that Kenny [Dalglish] said was like a trophy in itself, which isn't too far off the mark. To qualify especially coming in at that time was an incredible achievement.
“To go on and beat a very good Aberdeen team in the League Cup [final] convincingly, to go and win the league and have the distance and points margin we have, to be unbeaten and break a Lisbon Lions record is phenomenal. We have a chance to make it an absolutely historic season but, before a ball is kicked at the weekend, the players have been brilliant and it has been a nice step forward for us in our first season together.”
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