The recent progress of the team has the manager ‘really excited’, with Brendan Rodgers expressing confidence ahead of Celtic’s Champions League trip to Borussia Dortmund. Painful experiences in Munich, Madrid, Paris, and Barcelona would normally instill some trepidation, but Rodgers believes in the team’s ability to compete at a high level.

“For us it’s looking to bring our game to the next level,” Rodgers said. “I think how we’ve been performing over probably the last six, seven months has just been increasing. Now we’ve come to this level and we’re under no illusions about that. We’re playing against a team that are challenging the very top end of elite football. But for us, I’ve always said, whether it’s domestically or whether it’s away in this competition, it’s making us a really difficult team to play against, with and without the ball. That’s what we want to be able to do. I’m not looking for perfection, I’m just looking for us to be really, really difficult to play against and give everything we have. Bring our game, which is to press, to fight, to run. We know at times that quality drives you back and then it’s having that resilience in those moments. But we also know that we have a game that can hurt teams as well, with our football and our speed. So I’m really excited about seeing that.”

Rodgers believes that Celtic can be a different force in Europe now, crediting the change to mindset, belief, and experience, as well as the addition of key players. The team arrived in Germany on a high, having won all nine matches this season, scoring 33 goals and conceding only four. The highlight was not the win against Rangers, but a dominant 5-1 performance against Slovan Bratislava in the Champions League opener.

Rodgers briefly managed ‘super professional’ Nuri Sahin and continues to have high hopes for the team’s future success.