Brendan Rodgers: First season at Celtic has been a '˜dream'

Brendan Rodgers has called his first season a 'dream' after becoming only the third manager to win the treble with Celtic, following Tom Rogic's late winners in the Scottish Cup final.

Brendan Rodgers 's first season at Celtic has been a 'dream'. Pic: SNS/Alan Harvey

Celtic game into the Hampden park encounter with Aberdeen knowing they could become only the fourth side in the club’s history to complete the treble and more impressively become the first club in Scottish football history to go through the domestic season unbeaten.

Celtic fell behind tp Jonny Hayes’ strike, but responded quickly through Stuart Armstrong with Rogic winning it in stoppage time. It was Celtic’s 47th match unbeaten this season.

When interviewed by the BBC after the match he was asked about the seven targets he had set his side, the Scottish Cup victory ensured they achieved six of the targets.

“We added a few more as we went along obviously to ensure that the impetus with the players continues,” he said. “It’s been a dream. You could never have sat down coming in at the start of the season and write down what we would have done. But I said to the players before we went out that you have to make history it doesn’t just happen and the players went out and did that.

The Northern Irishman paid tributes to his players after a difficult first half.

“I thought we deserved it in the end,” he noted. “It was a very, very tough game as you’d expect the final to be. I thought the first half was a bit nervy from us, we didn’t quite pass it so well; give credit to Aberdeen for that.

“I said at half-time that we just needed to stay calm and eventually, because they man-mark, the space will open up because you keep moving the ball, moving it quickly then players can start to tire as the second half wore on. Our only disappointment was that we didn’t score more goals. An incredibly way to win a cup final, right at the end. I’m really happy for the players and supporters, a great day for the club.

Rodgers enthuses about his first campaign and stated his intention for the club to continue moving forward.

“I was born into Celtic,” he acknowledged. “There’s been only pride for me and it is a huge privilege to manage Celtic. I was born into Celtic, into the Celtic family and I always wanted to manage Celtic. It was the right time for everyone, myself, the club, and now we’ve created an identity this season that allows us to hopefully build on this and improve over the coming years but to achieve what we did this year is a really spectacular achievement and it’s surreal really.