Brendan admits the supporter in him led him to go on his Ibrox touchline run
Celtic boss Brendan Rodgers has relived the moment Edouard Odsonne’s winner against Rangers sent him sprinting up the Ibrox touchline in delight.
“I do tend to find myself wanting to run against Rangers!” the Celtic gaffer said, with a laugh, at the thought of his enthusiastic celebrations during last month’s league victory at the home of his side’s greatest rivals.
“That is probably just the supporter in me. Last time I pulled my calf!
“But listen, these are very highly-charged games and the atmosphere on the day was brilliant.
“You have to say that when Rangers scored that first goal, anybody who was there would have said: ‘Bloody hell, what a game this is going to be’. “And then for us to come through, it was really pleasing.”
This afternoon’s Scottish Cup semi-final renewal will see Rodgers move into derby double figures as a Hoops boss. He has yet to lose.
However, if it is a milestone which underlines how often the top teams meet in this country, he insists rapid repetition has yet to dull his appreciation of the fixture.
“Oh, aye, there is a real buzz of excitement when you wake up in the morning and think: ‘We are playing Rangers this afternoon’. There is no doubt about that at all,” Rodgers said.
“Just the sense of being in the middle of it and being able to affect it. So every game gives you that buzz. It is a fantastic fixture.
“My memories of it go way, way back to when Peter Mccloy was in goal for Rangers, watching the games on BBC Scotland, so we had to watch them in the house.
“I remember the strips, and John Mcclelland because he was obviously Northern Irish, and Jimmy Nicholl, too.” As much as he relishes the occasion, the Celtic manager focuses on the importance of
keeping an emotional and intellectual distance from the madness around him. “You have got to make sure you don’t trap yourself, as well as the players, in to the pressure,” he said.
“It is always there. You can’t try to hide from it by pretending it is not there. Because, make no mistake about it, it is there. “You carry the responsibility for millions of supporters, your players, your club, your board. It is there. It is not going away. “What you have to do is re-direct the flow of all the background noise that goes around it and filter it, in order for you to concentrate on your job, so that when you are under pressure in your job, you think clearly, not emotionally. “That comes with experience. It comes with being in the situation and dealing with it.
“I have experienced it nine times now, but I have always tried to stay calm within it all and not let the mind wander too much. At the end of the day, you have to try to control everything. “From the coach’s perspective and manager’s perspective, it is a different focus than what it is if you are travelling to watch the game on the coach.
“That is a totally different thing altogether.
“But yes, of course, you are excited. And, of course, it was the same going back to my very first Celtic v Rangers game, when I first came in.” While accepting the general point that he is bound to end up on the losing side of the derby sometime, because everyone loses sometimes, Rodgers feels no reason to believe it will be this afternoon.
“It’s hard to win them all, but we have shown we can win in different ways,” he said. “Graeme Murty said after the last game that they may not have a better chance to beat us.
“We respect them, respect the game. But really our focus is on our own game.
“In these big games we have, in the main played well, and showed resilience and quality.”