Rodgers wants to rebuild Fortress Celtic Park, starting tonight. Let’s make some noise!

During the podcast the other night, one of my colleagues—Eric, I think—said something interesting. He said that Parkhead should be turned into a cauldron of noise, and that we should all do our part to make sure the atmosphere is intimidating, where the crowd seems almost to be breathing down the opposition’s necks.

When Rodgers echoed something similar in his press conference yesterday, it was further proof that he and a lot of the fans are of exactly the same mind on this. It’s nice to hear Bayern Munich players talking about how much they’re looking forward to playing at Celtic Park, in front of one of the most well-known and highly regarded football crowds in the world—but I don’t want them to enjoy that experience.

More importantly, Rodgers doesn’t want them to enjoy it either. He says he doesn’t want any player coming to Celtic Park and seeing it as some kind of box-checking exercise, some kind of bucket list thing—”Oh, now I’ve played in front of the Celtic fans.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love the number of players who have been absolutely stunned by the noise and the passion of Celtic Park. But I want them coming here feeling a little nervous—not just about the fans, but about the team itself, about the whole experience. I don’t want anyone seeing Celtic Park as some kind of football holiday destination. We have to show we mean business.

And this is what Rodgers means. Of course, he wants the fans to make a lot of noise, to cheer the team on. But he also wants it to be a little bit scary. He wants us, as a club, to be a little bit scary. As I said before, some of the directors—those who didn’t get him his striker—may have given up on Champions League progress. But Rodgers has not. And he will not. Rodgers will never give up on making this club better.

He believes we belong on this stage. He sees Celtic Park as an arena that teams should fear coming to. We don’t have the world-class players that Bayern Munich can throw at us, but nor are we a minor irritant for this superclub.

We’re going to make them work for everything they get from the game. We’re going to make them sweat from the first minute to the last. And we have one or two surprises to spring on them, in addition to the Celtic Park crowd.

Rodgers is sick of the fans being the only thing people want to talk about when they leave Celtic Park after a big Champions League night. He wants people talking about the force, aggression, pace, and quality of the team on the pitch. That is what he wants them to remember Parkhead for—not just the noise, but the football.

This is an exciting night for us all. This is the biggest test we’ve had on home soil in this competition, the biggest game we’ll play this season. It is a night of enormous significance and consequence. What we want to do, above all else, is give ourselves a chance for Germany. Give ourselves a chance for that second leg.

Any kind of victory would register as one of the most significant moments we’ve had in this competition since the days when Milan and Barcelona were coming here and being beaten in the group stages.

And Eric was right to remind people that we have been a formidable team at home this season. We’ve already beaten a top German side at Celtic Park. We came back from 2-0 down after just five minutes to give Villa the fright of their lives. We kept out a brilliant Atalanta side in Italy in front of their own support.

But tonight, we can take an even bigger step. This manager is a believer. I hope these players are believers. And we should all be believers—even if some of those at the top of our house are not.

Because this is a stage we belong on, and this is the best chance we’ll have this season to prove it. The opposition is strong. But so are we.

And that’s what Rodgers wants everyone to remember. If they arrive not knowing it, he wants them to know it when they leave.

Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images

The other night we put up our latest podcast. Recorded just after the Ibrox club went crashing out of the cup, we called it They’re Simply Depressed.