Those seeking signs of tension between the managers of Celtic and Borussia Dortmund tonight will be looking in the wrong place.
The build-up to Celtic’s visit to the Signal Iduna Park has been dominated by some old quotes from Nuri Sahin thanking the almighty for the day he escaped Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool.
Tonight, the pair will reserve the hostilities for the field of play. While the forecasts predict heavy rain over Dortmund, the managers are keen to let water pass under the bridge.
A German-born Turkish international, Sahin was always a different kind of footballer. Fluent in five languages, the midfielder suffered a serious tendon injury in 2015. Warned by doctors that he might not play again, he began to plan for the future.
In 2018, he enrolled in Harvard Business School. Keen to learn about the lives of the less fortunate in Africa, he signed up to an initiative to open water wells in Ethiopia.
Rodgers unveils new arrival Sahin at Anfield after beating Arsenal to his signature in 2012
The Turkish international failed to impress at Liverpool after being deployed in unfamiliar roles
Sahin struggled to break into a midfield featuring Steven Gerrard and Jordan Henderson
Blessed with a natural intelligence, he didn’t always use it as well as he might have. Sidelined by Jose Mourinho at Real Madrid, youthful confidence convinced a 23-year-old Sahin that, in a head-to-head battle with Steven Gerrard, he could win.
Snatching the mic from Sinatra proved tougher than he thought. Rodgers moved him to a No 10 role — Jurgen Klopp described it more as a ‘nine and a half’ — in a vain attempt to shoehorn his talents into the team.
Shortly after moving back to Dortmund in a £7million deal, Sahin told a Spanish paper: ‘I did not fail at Liverpool. Brendan Rodgers wanted me to play as a No 10, but I do not play behind the strikers. Thank God I have left Brendan Rodgers.’
Twelve years have passed since then and Sahin is now the 36-year-old coach of Dortmund. Rodgers is back in his second spell at Celtic and, tonight, the two men meet again in the refashioned Westfalenstadion, content to let sleeping dogs lie.
‘Tomorrow, we meet again after 12 years and I’m really looking forward to this duel,’ said the Dortmund coach.
‘I don’t know what I said back in the days when I was young, but the only thing was for me that I played in a different position than I used to play.
‘The problem was that Steven Gerrard played in my position, so I had to adjust with my position, and this was the only thing. Everything else, I really enjoyed during my time at Liverpool. It’s a fantastic club and, under Brendan, I enjoyed every training session with him.
Rodgers and Sahin during happier times on Merseyside
‘It was very ball-oriented, ball possession and playing in the opponent’s half. I can only say good things about him and my time there.
‘The thing is, when you get a call from Dortmund, and you’re a Dortmund boy, you go back home. This was the only reason.’
Rodgers understood the reasons behind Sahin’s frustration in Liverpool, but welcomes the chance to meet his former player in competitive action. And the Parkhead boss suspects the Dortmund coach has more insight into the rationale employed 12 years ago.
‘I never get too emotional with words,’ says Rodgers. ‘I think that players and young players, they all want to play. I think, at that time when Nuri was at Liverpool, he had other players that were just ahead of him.
‘Unfortunately, at that time, I’d moved Steven Gerrard from a No 10 position into a deeper role. I also had Jordan Henderson — those two guys are among the greatest captains in the history of Liverpool — and that’s who Nuri was competing against.
‘I tried to put him into the team and play in some positions that probably didn’t quite suit him. I might have played him as No 10 when he was a deeper player but I had other players in those positions that were doing really well for me.
Across his time, he was a good guy. He loved his football, trained very well, was super professional and, of course, he left Liverpool and went back to Dortmund and I followed his career from there.
Rodgers followed Sahin’s career after he left Liverpool, with the pair now set to meet again
‘So, it’s great to see him. And now, moving into a management perspective, you know the challenges and he’ll start to understand that.
‘You get the likes of (Marcel) Sabitzer at the moment who wants to play central and he’s playing wide at Dortmund. So, all these little things come to you as a coach and a manager.’
Rodgers also signed Emre Can, Borussia Dortmund’s captain, for Liverpool and while the departures of Niclas Fullkrug, Mats Hummels and Jadon Sancho might be seen to have weakened the Dortmund team which lost to Real Madrid at Wembley in May, they remain a formidable proposition at home.
Ironically, Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Rangers secured a memorable 4-2 win at the Signal Iduna en route to the Europa League final of 2022.
Since then, BvB have played 10 home games in Europe against Manchester City, Chelsea, PSG (twice), AC Milan, Newcastle, Atletico Madrid, PSV Eindhoven, Sevilla and Copenhagen and haven’t lost any. The scale of the task facing Celtic, then, can’t be overstated.
There’s a school of thought that victory in the home games will be enough to secure a place in the play-off stage.
A 5-1 win over Slovan Bratislava on the opening night left some wiggle room for back-to-back away trips to Dortmund and Europa League winners Atalanta.
Sahin was quick to insist that any discontent between the pair was now water under the bridge
Beat Young Boys and Club Brugge in Glasgow and progress would be tantalisingly close. Yet any repeat of the five and six-goal thrashings sustained in Madrid in the last two seasons would remove some gloss from the achievement.
In the last two seasons, Scotland’s champions have lost 19 goals in their six Champions League away games.
Their last away win in the competition was against Anderlecht in 2017 and, to succeed at this level, Rodgers needs to add a real streak of pragmatism to the truly swashbuckling football of recent weeks.
They need to do the dirty stuff a good deal better.
Asked why he thinks they can do it, Rodgers cited mindset, belief and experience, not all of it good.
‘I think we’ve also added some players that give us something in key areas of the pitch that you need,’ said the Celtic boss, before adding: ‘I will only know when I see it.
‘Domestically, we’ve done very, very well, but we want to see what the transfer looks like to this level.’
