Brendan Rodgers is taking Celtic and himself beyond levels of which Ange could only dream – Keith Jackson

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There will, of course, be accusations of recency bias. And they’ll probably not be without some basis.

Martin O’Neill’s Celtic, for example, more than held their own on the European stage before, during and after that ground trembling run to Seville. Gordon Strachan would go on to create fairytale memories of his own with his seven dwarves routine and Neil Lennon will always have Barcelona.

In a different way, Walter Smith’s journey to the UEFA Cup Final in Manchester involved some extraordinary performances and will go down in history as a case study for management at its finest. That Rangers side had no real right to go as far as it did other than the fact that the man in charge of putting it together was a borderline genius in footballing terms.

When Giovanni van Bronckhorst matched Smith’s achievement in 2022, some of the high water marks hit throughout that run also managed to take the breath away. Ibrox on Thursday nights under the lights became an other worldly experience. All of this is true.

But, even so, when taken in isolation, what we witnessed on Tuesday night under the lights at Celtic Park feels as impressive and as comprehensive as anything seen during these 21st century ram-raids across the Continent.

If Celtic’s performance the previous time out against Atalanta in Bergamo was their coming of age performance on the Champions League stage, the display they put on against RB Leipzig took this new found maturity to a completely different level.

The emphatic nature of the 3-1 scoreline doesn’t come close to telling the whole story. This was a win so complete and a performance so polished that, at times, it managed to take the breath away. And, for boss Brendan Rodgers, it looked very much like vindication and the delivery of a promise made on his first day back in the office when he insisted his driving ambition second time around was to re-establish the club as a genuine European force.

That all seemed somewhat far-fetched at the time, given the extent of Celtic’s struggles on foreign soil. But it was also the one big selling point left for a man who knew deep down Ange Postecoglou had stolen his mantle as the darling of the Parkhead support.

So when Rodgers watched on, apparently helplessly, as his side was being brutalised by Borussia Dortmund on October 1, it did begin to feel as if his mouth may have been signing cheques that his coaching abilities couldn’t possibly cash.

That seven goal humiliation brought distant memories of previous European embarrassments under Rodgers rushing back into focus as well as a feeling that he and his team are out of their depth at this level all over again. When he explained it away afterwards as a one off and a game that simply ‘got away’ from his players in the eye of a perfect black and yellow storm, yes, the temptation was to roll the eyes and come to the conclusion that lessons were simply not being learned.

And especially when, with his next breath, he insisted he would not change a thing when he took his team to Italy to face an Atalanta side which is currently ripping up all manner of trees in Serie A. But, in reality, Rodgers was too smart to allow the same mistakes to be made against an old fox in Gian Pero Gasperini.

Celtic were tighter all over the pitch, structured and disciplined out of possession and, most impressively of all, more street smart than anyone - other than perhaps Rodgers himself - might reasonably have expected. And they took all of this into Tuesday night’s visit from a German outfit which is currently out performing Dortmund in the Bundesliga, sitting as they do in second place behind Bayern Munich.

That they arrived in Glasgow in desperate need of a win - having already been vanquished by Atletico Madrid, Juventus and Liverpool - added an even greater sense of danger to the occasion. And, yes, in the moments immediately after Christophe Baumgartner planted a header beyond the grasp of Kasper Schmeichel to put the Germans in front, it did feel as if this might be another Champions League game about to ‘get away’ from Rodgers and his players.

Which, on reflection. is another reason why this performance was so surprisingly impressive. Rather than fold under fire, as they had done so spectacularly at the Westfalen, Celtic delved deep into their reserves of resilience and simply refused to wilt in the face of a gathering onslaught. Rather, they regained their composure and began to pass the ball around with even greater purpose and precision until they were toying with the threat on the other side of the pitch.

Amongst all this, Nicolas Kuhn also flicked a switch somewhere inside and took his game to a level with which Leipzig’s defenders simply could not cope. His first goal was a thing of outrageous beauty but even though his second was poached from far closer in, it was arguably even more impressive where Celtic’s growth spurt at this level is concerned.

It was created in the first instance by a frenzy of manically aggressive pressing on the edge of the Germans’ box, leading to a sublime disguised pass from Reo Hatate, a lunging cut-back from the outstanding Greg Taylor and another clinical Kuhn finish.

It was just about the picture perfect moment for Rodgers who had this kind of thing in his mind’s eye back on day one, when he first walked back into town in the knowledge that not everyone in Glasgow’s east end was all that happy to see him.

Back then, the thought that Rodgers could perform the same pied piper routine on these people as he had once before seemed like too much of a stretch of the imagination. But, now that he delivers on his word, his stock in this part of the world – and beyond these borders for that matter – may never have felt as high as it does right now.

With seven Champions League points already secured from a possible 12, Rodgers is on course to lead Scotland’s Champions into the promised land of a place in the last eight of the greatest competition in club football.

It’s now entirely possible they make it there without having to go through the play-offs given that two more home games are still to come against Brugge and Young Boys. And if that should come to pass then Rodgers really will have succeeded in picking up what Postecoglou left behind and lifting Celtic to the level which maybe only he truly believed to be reachable.

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