The Football Interview is a new series in which the biggest names in sport and entertainment join host Kelly Somers for bold and in-depth conversations about the nation’s favourite sport.

We’ll explore mindset and motivation, and talk about defining moments, career highs and personal reflections. The Football Interview brings you the person behind the player.

Interviews will drop on Saturdays across BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds and the BBC Sport website. This week’s interview will be broadcast on BBC One from 23:55 BST on Saturday, 18 October (and after Sportscene in Scotland).

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Brendan Rodgers has been a manager for almost two decades, but a coach for much longer – after a knee injury ended his career as a professional footballer when he was 20.

After travelling around Europe to learn coaching methods from different countries, Rodgers became a youth team coach under Jose Mourinho at Chelsea in 2004, before taking his first steps into management, aged 35, with Watford four years later.

Now 52, the former Reading, Swansea, Liverpool and Leicester manager is in his second spell at Celtic, where he has won four Scottish Premiership titles, plus both domestic cup competitions.

Rodgers sat down with Kelly Somers to talk about not playing 11-a-side football until he was 13, his standout match as a manager, and his bid to join the 1,000 club.

Kelly Somers: What does football mean to you?

Brendan Rodgers: Football, for as long as I’ve known, has been my life. To my kids, I would often pick up a size five football and tell them: ‘This ball here has taken me around the world and given me an amazing life.’ That has purely been from when I was a child just loving the game and watching the game. I have a photograph of when I was only two when I broke my leg. It’s actually how I became left-footed because I used to kick the ball with my right foot. The my brother pushed me out of the pram and I broke my leg, and while it was in plaster they said I always wanted a football. I started kicking with my left foot and when I got the plaster off, I was all left-footed. I was very, very lucky to have then spent my life in football. For as long as I’ve known, it has been a part of my life.

Kelly: Can you remember the first proper team you played for?

Brendan: I didn’t play my first 11-a-side game until I was 13. At primary school, we loved football but never had a team. I never had a team in secondary school but it was through friends at secondary school. They played for a team called Star United in Ballymena and they asked me to come along and play for them. That was virtually my first game.

Kelly: What were those years like going through the system and you maybe realised you could maybe make it as a player?

Brendan: I’d always hoped that I could. Obviously when you go through those age groups, you are always wondering when the chance would come. Because I wasn’t playing in teams, I remember I’d read the Shoot magazine and there was the Bobby Charlton Soccer School and I must have annoyed the life out of my mum and dad with saying, ‘I needed to get to it’ – and I was able to go there in the hope I could maybe be picked up. The whole dream was to be able to move across to England and be full-time.

Kelly: You were this young boy with a dream of being a footballer but it didn’t go probably the way you would have hoped at that point, I am guessing…

Brendan: No. I think my youth career – I started at 13 and very quickly my first club that I went to was Manchester United. I got picked up within a matter of months of playing to go on trial at Manchester United. Then I went to a number of clubs and became an international player for Northern Ireland, which was an amazing feeling, and then I went to Reading. The age when I stopped playing I recognised I probably wasn’t going to be the player I hoped and someone said to me the next best thing to playing is coaching, so I moved into coaching.

Kelly: The start of your coaching journey was quite interesting, wasn’t it? Where did you go to learn your craft?

Brendan: I had been out to Spain and to Barcelona. I was always interested in youth and I tried to earmark clubs that really had that top-to-tail philosophy – so from the very top of the club right through to the bottom there is a sort of synergy there. That married in with my beliefs in the game – a technical game. I also went to Sevilla and Valencia and I was in Holland as well – to Ajax and FC Twente. For me, the start point was seeing the European game and how they develop young players in Europe, that shouldn’t be any different to how we develop our own players.

Kelly: Moving on to you going to Chelsea, would you say that was your first big coaching job?

Brendan: Yes. I think it shone the light on me probably a lot more. Being at Reading was brilliant – they were a club who looked after me as a player. I ended up being academy manager there and had a great spell of nearly 14 years there. Going to Chelsea with Jose Mourinho coming in, where they wanted to go to as a club and how they wanted to transform the youth section… there was no doubt because when I went in there and I was only in the door two or three weeks and there were four or five high-profile coaches linked with my job. I had never had that before. I went to Jose early on and he told me: ‘When you are at these top clubs you will have at least 12 names linked with your job. It will be the same with me as a manager. Don’t worry, work hard and work well and it will be OK.’

Kelly: That must have been an incredible learning ground and taught you so many things you still use today…

Brendan: The opportunity to work with world-class players and some brilliant youth players, and then I had the chance to work closer with the first team. At that time it was John Terry, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and Claude Makelele – to be around that and see how they live their life every day, how they train and operate… it set the bar for me because everything they wanted to do was world class.

Kelly: You have been at such a variety of clubs since then, from starting out as a manager to Watford, Swansea, Liverpool and Celtic twice as well. How you would you sum up your coaching journey, and has it surpassed your expectations?

Brendan: I think when I first started, if I thought I’d be sat here after this duration and managed the clubs I have, I would be really proud of that, from starting as a manager at 35.

Kelly: What was that like in itself?

Brendan: Especially without the playing background, I had to really earn my stripes as a coach. Once I became a manager, you really realised that with the curtain drawn back and the light shining on you as manager, it is a different world. You can be so close as the assistant or first-team coach but being the actual lead and the guy responsible… it is a different job altogether.

Kelly: If you could relive one match, what would it be?

Brendan: A game that stands out because it really propelled me was the play-off final – Swansea v Reading. To get Swansea into the Premier League as the first Welsh club to arrive there and knowing how much it meant to people at the time…

Kelly: It’s the worst game in football to lose and the best to win, isn’t it?

Brendan: 100%. To go up out of the Championship… if you knew you could do it by winning the play-offs, you would take it, even over winning the league because of the whole drama around it and the big Wembley day. That was special. I’ve been fortunate enough to have won trophies up here with Celtic, which was special to me. Winning the FA Cup for the first time in Leicester’s history was special. But I feel that game just changed it for me going into the Premier League, and then we did well.

Kelly: Has there been a turning point in your career?

Brendan: I go back to my youth. My cousin Kieran McMullan in the little village where I was from. He played for the local football team and they would meet outside the pub. I wasn’t allowed to go in the pub when I was younger. We would be stood outside and the team would meet there to travel to play games. Guys would come out of the pub and just go past me into the car, but he always made sure I got in a car so I could see the football. I never ever forgot that. For the remaining years of my childhood, that got me started in football. If he didn’t take that time and care to look after me, I might have got into Gaelic football or hurling instead.

Kelly: You’ve managed numerous clubs in England and now you manage one of the biggest clubs in Scotland. How does the pressure compare managing Celtic?

Brendan: It’s a real unique pressure. In terms of pressure, Celtic is right up there with the most pressurised jobs in football. Even when I was managing Liverpool, you might have drawn with Manchester United and you wanted to win, but it wouldn’t have been the worst result. With Celtic, it’s an expectation to win every single game and not just win the game, but to do it in a style that is synonymous with the club. The club was the first British team to win the European Cup. They did so in a style which set the DNA for this club. It’s not just about winning. It’s Celtic, it really is more than that. The mental fortitude you need to show here as a player, as a manager, under the spotlight is huge. You can go to quite a lot of teams in the Premier League and
it would be like a holiday compared to managing Celtic, and Rangers for that matter.

Kelly: What’s the proudest thing you have achieved in your career?

Brendan: I think becoming a manager in the first place because my journey was different – the path to becoming a manager. That is the biggest achievement for me. Hopefully I can continue to be as successful as I possibly can – by that I mean helping players develop, helping them improve, helping the conditions in their life. If that allows me to win trophies along the way, then great. Being a manager is my highlight.

Kelly: If you could only achieve one more thing in your career, what would it be?

Brendan: Reach 1,000 games. That was where it all started. When I became manager at Watford, I went to a great event that the LMA [League Managers’ Association] do. On the stage that night was guys that were being inducted into the 1,000 club. I remember sitting there thinking ‘wow, to have done 1,000 games’. I was maybe on only 20-odd games. I thought to be able to do 1,000 games is a symbol of resilience and perseverance and people actually liking what you do. I’m on 800-odd games now so still have quite a few more to go, but that would be the one career thing to be able to do.