The challenge of containing
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE Brendan Rodgers may be in awe of Luis Suarez but he is looking forward to trying to keep him and his fellow superstars quiet, finds Nick Rodger
SUAREZ, Messi, Neymar, Iniesta? It’s a list of names that would send shudders down the steeliest of spines. “I think if we were here in 10 years, it would still be a tough task,” said Brendan Rodgers with a smile when asked if the visit to Barcelona on Champions League duty has come a bit too early for a Celtic side he is still moulding and shaping. “Let’s make no mistake about it. Real Madrid have gone there and suffered. Bayern Munich have gone there and suffered. Other teams way beyond our level have suffered. We have to somehow find a way to get a result that can give the players confidence. The beauty is to be able to challenge themselves in an arena like that.”
Trying to winkle out some kind of positive result in the cavernous coliseum that is the Camp Nou is a formidable task on a par with attempting to scale Everest in a tattered old pair of baffies. At least you get an occasional breather going up that particular peak. Barcelona, on the other hand, are so unrelenting in their advances you just about require breathing apparatus to cope with the fearsome onslaughts.
For Rodgers, this will be an occasion to savour and an opportunity to meet up with his former Liverpool talisman Luis Suarez, a player even the great Pele said owed much of his stature to the Northern Irishman.
“That was a nice thing to read,” Rodgers said of the Brazilian legend’s comments last week. “My dad would have been proud. Pele was my dad’s hero.”
That hero status was bestowed upon Suarez too during his time at Anfield when Rodgers’ Liverpool came close to winning the league title for the first time in more than 20 years. Both would eventually depart for pastures new but the level of admiration Rodgers has for the occasionally controversial yet compelling Uruguayan remains undiminished.
“If you were to pick a world-class competitor, that’s Luis Suarez,” said Rodgers. “I’ll give you an example. We’d just had an international break, he’s come back late on Thursday night having travelled all around South America playing for Uruguay and on the Friday he’s come into training and we’ve got Wigan on the Saturday and I’m thinking: ‘I’m going to need to rest this guy’. He looked absolutely shattered. I said, ‘listen Luis, I’m thinking of just giving you a breather tomorrow’ and he went, ‘OK boss, but let’s just see how I am tomorrow’. So we trained and did a bit of recovery and the next day we spoke and I’m still thinking, ‘I wonder if I can play him here?’. I decided to go with it. We won 4-0, he scores a hat-trick and he ran as much as anyone. I thought, ‘wow, this is a special mentality’.
“Boys who are genuine world-class, it’s not just talent, it’s availability. These guys put the games in. Ronaldo, Neymar, Suarez, Bale. They are playing games. They are playing 50 or more. He wasn’t just available for every game but every training session. He didn’t want to rest. But the biggest accolade you can give him is that he went to arguably one of the best teams ever seen and made them better. Every time I see Messi, he’s with Suarez, because he’s so infectious. His hunger and desire to play and train is infectious. He’s a great man.”
In a sense, Tuesday’s trip to the Catalan city will be something of a return to Rodgers’ spiritual home. During his formative years as a coach, he would immerse himself in the Barcelona way and absorb the structures and philosophies during a series of illuminating, educational visits. “Sunday was a great day for me in Barcelona,” he reflected. “You’d get up in the morning and go to watch the kids’