Brendan Rodgers wants Celtic to come away from their Champions League play-off against Bayern Munich with no regrets.
The visitors trail 2-1 going into Tuesday’s second leg at the Allianz Arena and the manager accepts it will take a performance of the highest quality to be successful but stresses that it is a challenge he and his players “want to embrace”.
“There’s no second chance,” said Rodgers. “We’ve got to be clever, bright and brave and if we can do that, history has shown that in sport anything can happen.
“You come to this level and you have to play without any fear. There’s worse things in life than losing a game of football so we want to ensure when we come in after the game, if we don’t go through, we’ve given it absolutely everything.”
Bayern, tournament winners on six occasions, are unbeaten in their past 20 Champions League home matches.
The Bundesliga leaders have never lost to Celtic, winning four of the five previous meetings, while Celtic are still waiting for a first win in Germany after 15 attempts.
But Rodgers is taking heart from a strong finish in Glasgow, with Daizen Maeda pulling a goal back for his side after strikes from Michael Olise and Harry Kane.
“I’m so happy I have this group of players with incredible mentality and professionalism,” added Rodgers. “If they show that then we know we’re in with a chance.
“As long as you can take that opportunity to give your very best, you can come in and say ‘we were beaten by the better team’. The regret is if you don’t and you just turn up too late.
“We’ve shown that when we can play at the very top of our game and if a team are not quite at their best, then we can punish them.
“We’ve done very well to get to this point and when you do that you’re going to play top-level teams. This is a team that has world-class players. For us it’ll be about our collective.
“Everyone will look at this game with us as underdog but we’re still very mindful to be super-competitive and, if we can play to our level, we can make the game very difficult for Bayern.”
Kompany plays down Kane absence from training
Bayern Munich star Kane missed training on Monday but head coach Vincent Kompany said the striker’s facial injury is “nothing too bad”.
The England captain, who has 29 goals for the season, took a knock in Saturday’s goalless draw at Bayer Leverkusen, although he lasted the whole match.
“It’s nothing really serious but we have not had much time to recover,” explained Kompany. “Tomorrow morning we will see how he feels but I think it’s nothing too bad.”
Joao Palhinha and Alphonso Davies missed the first leg and neither are expected to return in time for the hosts, but central defender Kim Min-jae is likely to be back after playing at the weekend.
Celtic have a full squad, with Rodgers saying Jota is fit enough to start and that deploying fellow winger Maeda in a central role is “certainly something we have talked about”.
He added: “We design a plan for the game, knowing whatever team starts will need players coming off the side. It’s such a demanding level, physically.”
