Brendan Rodgers: Celtic discovered we can compete in Champions League

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers believes his side have discovered they can compete at Champions League level as they celebrated a 3-1 win over RB Leipzig.

The Scottish champions fell a goal behind to their highly-rated Bundesliga opposition but bounced back with two goals from Nicolas Kuhn and a strike from Reo Hatate to claim victory.

The win puts Celtic on seven points from four games at the halfway stage of the League phase. The opening win against Slovan Bratislava was followed by a bruising 7-1 loss away to Borussia Dortmund but Rodgers has seen his side draw with Atalanta in Bergamo before defeating RB Leipzig.

The manager thinks the team have found belief and made a ‘discovery’ in their last two matches in the elite competition.

“It gives a real nice confidence for the team,” Rodgers said. “I think we’ve discovered in the last two games that we can be really competitive.

“If you’d said after the Dortmund game that we would have got four points from Atalanta and Red Bull Leipzig, probably not too many people would have said we would have done that.

“But I think we’ve discovered that we can play at the level. So it’s a great next step.

“To have seven points after four games, especially with the level of performance that we’ve played, gives us great encouragement.

“It means in the next four games we can have a real confidence to go and make the play-off stage, but it’s still such a long way to go.”

Asked if there was one aspect of his teams display that particularly pleased him, Rodgers said the whole approach was good and had seen his side show both their attacking verve and discipline at the back.

“I think just the overall performance [was pleasing],” he said.

“I think we started the game with a real good confidence. Twenty minutes in I think we then concede the goal o we get rocked for a little bit and we’re a bit loose with our passing.

“But I think the maturity in the team to then recover that, score the first goal and then continue to play, and I’m always especially on the pressing side of the game and the aggressive side of the game, I thought that we were absolutely outstanding in that.

“And I felt tonight, we had that combination of the Bratislava vibrancy and excitement in our attack and then the real tactical discipline in our defending.

“I think we pulled those two together to produce an outstanding team performance against a really,really , really good side who have only conceded five goals all season

So for us to have three and to have other opportunities to score, it was I tip my hat to the players.”

Rodgers agreed that it was his best night in European competition as Celtic manager, as the team won three consecutive home games in the competition for the first time since 2007.

“In terms of the level of opponent, I would say that actually it wasn’t just the result, but the performance,” he said. “We played the game with a great charisma and confidence and showed the courage in our pressing.

“We’ve had some really good results but that definitely would be the best one.”

The manager also found time to praise Nicolas Kuhn, who scored twice and was a constant threat against the side where he spent three years as a youth player.

“He’s still young so he still has more to go,” Rodgers said. “I thought his pressing could have been better. That was the thing I said to him.

“He’s obviously got goal contribution efficiency but he’s just learning and developing all the time.

“We’ve seen his talent. Bringing him to here was about making more goal contributions, being more robust and sustaining playing.

“But I thought he was really exciting when he had the ball and obviously the two goals were great for him having worked at Red Bull Leipzig before as a young player.”