In the wake of his side's well-earned 0-0 draw with Atalanta in Italy this week, Brendan Rodgers spoke once more about his Celtic players learning at the top level of European club football.
It's been an omnipresent facet of the Celtic manager's approach to this year's UEFA Champions League campaign, and it's one that's so far had its highs and lows.
Celtic's storming 5-1 victory over Slovan Bratislava deserved every plaudit it received on the opening day of the tournament; whereas the same can be said of the criticism levied at the Irishman and his players in the wake of their 7-1 trouncing against Borussia Dortmund earlier this month.
Wednesday night's stalemate in Bergamo marked a steely, gritty and determined performance from the visitors as they defended for their lives for long stretches of the match.
Still, especially towards the end of the night, Celtic might have snatched a goal with a flurry of half-chances.
As far as learning in the competition is concerned, Rodgers believes his side have the scope to capitalise on these moments in future.
He said: "I think it's having that wee bit of composure at the level as well. These are games where you have to have that belief to play as well. We had a couple of wee moments going into that last period, where it looked like it could be the absolute perfect performance. We defended well and then on the counter-attack, you get your goals.
"It didn't quite just drop for us, but that is the next stage. But a game against Atalanta looks totally different to some other games. If you look at the number of times in the first half, you make a knock-back and a through pass and sequence, then all of a sudden, you're through on their goal."
Read more:
- What Celtic's Kuhn needs to cope with the fixture schedule
- Why Celtic's manager entrusted Engels with a 'specific job'
Rodgers added: "That doesn't happen a lot in football. Normally, you've got to go through various zones and lots of bodies behind the ball. But against their man-to-man, once you broke through it two or three times, you were in.
"So, it's just having that, making maybe some more of the right decisions in those moments, can definitely help us, for sure.
"I was really pleased with what I've seen in the game, in terms of the concentration mentality. And I know that confidence will always grow with the ball the more opportunities you're in that tournament, and you get the experience of it."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel