The Bhoys were dealt a devastating blow after conceding in injury time to draw 1-1 (losing 3-2 on aggregate) in the second leg of their play-off tie on Tuesday (18.02.25) but the coach felt that the performance has restored the team "credibility" on the continental stage.

Rodgers said: "I can only take immense pride from the performance. The guys gave everything.

"European credibility was always going to be important for us this season. That’s my takeaway from this campaign, from the 10 games. We learnt some valuable lessons, and we played some amazing football along the way.

"We’ve taken a club of this size and magnitude and a club where one of the players is maybe more than our budget.

"So, everything that comes with that, it allows us to build. Last year, I felt that we had developed, even though we never got the points. Performance-wise, it was good.

"I think this season has been very good. We’ve made the progress that made me want to come back."

Celtic reached the knockout phase in Europe's top competition for the first time in 12 years this season and Rodgers wants to club to be a constant presence at the business end of the tournament.

The manager said: "My unswerving plan is to make this a seasoned club at this level, where we can hurt big opponents like Bayern Munich.

"We’ll look back to the first game and those little details around the goals that we conceded.

"But I think it can give us nothing but confidence to show that the template I spoke about defensively was very good. We limited them to not so many chances.

"We looked dangerous when we had the ball, we had some real good opportunities. Going forward, we can take confidence from it and we can build the squad in order to be competitive at this level."