Brendan Rodgers has responded to Roy Keane’s jibes about Celtic’s Champions League exploits.
Keane said that the Scottish champions needed to change their mindset following their 7-0 defeat to Barcelona, and although he accepted such a loss could happen to any side against the mighty Catalans, the Republic of Ireland assistant manager questioned the ambition of his former team.
Keane, who ended his playing career at Celtic, also criticised the “over the top” celebrations of the staff and players after they qualified for the group stages of the tournament.
“Even when they qualified for this group, the celebrations to me were way over the top,” Keane.
“They scraped through. I thought they actually won the competition. People were hugging each other — the manager, the coaching staff, the players. They should be expecting to do well in this group.”
Brendan Rodgers was, inevitably, asked about Keane’s comments ahead of Celtic’s game against Inverness Caledonian Thistle on Sunday.
The Celtic manager compared the celebrations of his team when they qualified for the Champions League group stages with the celebrations of the Ireland staff and players when they qualified for Euro 2016.
“I have seen some bits of Roy. Listen, I respect his opinion. He has been a manager and he understands and he is an assistant now,” Rodgers said.
“He has seen what it means in order to achieve something. When they qualified for the Euros I think that was an achievement. I don’t think there were too many of their staff who stood not smiling, or hugging, or cuddling.
“Where we are at, we went through six real tough qualification games. You can’t understand it until you actually come through it and actually experience the emotion and what it means to people.”
It seems as though Rodgers held back a bit in his response to Keane.
After all, this is a man who once said:
“All I’ll ever do is all I’ve ever done in any job, and that’s promise to fight for my life for the people of the city.”
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