Celtic announced on Friday that Brendan Rodgers had signed a four year contract with the club that runs until June 2021. It’s a huge boost for supporters in a week that was already one to celebrate after winning a sixth league title in a row on Sunday.
Rodgers has revitalised the Hoops this season, leading them through a campaign that has seen them not be beaten once by domestic opposition.
They’ve won the League Cup, the Scottish Premiership and are red hot favourites to also lift the Scottish Cup and win their first domestic treble of trophies in 16 years.
Supporters have taken the former Liverpool man to their hearts and could not be happier he’s staying on for four more years.
Now he’s brought managerial stability to the table, just what can he go on to achieve at the club?
Here are FOUR major ambitions he may have had in mind when signing his new long-term contract…
One step beyond
One of they key aims for Celtic over the next four years will be making significant progress in Europe. For his first season in charge, the Hoops’ run in Europe this year wasn’t half bad.
He guided them through the notorious gauntlet that is the summer UEFA Champions League qualifiers at the first attempt, qualifying for the group stages of the competition a season earlier than any other Celtic manager.
Now he’s well placed to push the Hoops on further and potentially into the knockout stages of Europe’s premier club competition. Celtic have been in the last 16 before of course, on three occasions, twice under Gordon Strachan and once under Neil Lennon.
What the club have never managed to do though is make it into the quarter-finals of the competition.
It appears Rodgers has a magic touch at Celtic so could he possibly be the first man to go one step beyond anyone in the Champions League era and lead the Hoops to that stage?
It’s not as impossible as you may think. With the right investment and attitude, Celtic can compete with many clubs around the continent.
Perhaps signing Rodgers up to a four year deal is the first statement of intent that Celtic are about to weigh in heavily on their European ambitions.
More than one treble
Only one manager has managed to win more than one domestic treble at the club; the legendary Jock Stein. Stein managed that feat in 1966/67 and 1968/69, with a clean sweep of the Scottish top-flight, Scottish Cup and Scottish League Cup.
Brendan Rodgers has a real chance of emulating that achievement over the next four years, if this season is anything to go by anyway.
You’d have to make Celtic massive favourites to complete the third step of the treble this season.
When you consider they haven’t been beaten once this season, who can realistically stop them on the road to another treble next season, or the next?
If Rodgers managed to do that he would go down as one of the greatest managers in the long, long history of the club. Perhaps another reason he’s signed up long-term, he’s reaching for immortality.
A European final
Perhaps want Celtic crave more than anything is a return to another European final one day down the line. The Hoops have reached finals on three occasions, the European Cup finals of 1967 and 1970 and the UEFA Cup Final of 2003.
It seems like a lifetime ago that 80,000 Celtic fans descended on Seville for that final in ’03, where they met a formidable foe in Jose Mourinho’s Porto.
If progression in the UEFA Champions League isn’t an option, if they don’t manage second place in the groups in years to come, then third place in those groups is certainly an achievable goal.
Once they’re in the knockout stages of the UEFA Europa League then anything can happen. Rangers of course made the UEFA Cup final less than a decade ago too.
It’s not completely out with the realms of possibility and is a tantalising prospect for Hoops supporters everywhere. Can Brendan Rodgers do it in the next four years?
10 in a row
Perhaps the biggest signal of intent from Brendan Rodgers signing a new four year contract is his commitment to be at the club through the potential 10-in-a-row season. The possibility of achieving this feat has become an obsession with Celtic supporters.
Celtic of course famously won nine-in-a-row throughout the 60s and 70s under Jock Stein, a feat that was matched by Rangers in the 80s and 90s.
Going one beyond that milestone would be the ultimate legacy of Rodgers’ time at the club and the ultimately achievement for bragging rights in Glasgow football society.
It certainly looks like they’re going to do it and this new contract is Rodgers’ way of saying to the supporters, “I want to be here for it.”
