Brendan Rodgers believes that a low key meeting with Tommy Burns was the catalyst to his decision to become manager of Celtic.
The relationship built up between the two men at Reading has been well recorded but yesterday the new man in charge of Celtic revealed that he had intended to have Burns as his Director of Football once he moved from coaching to management.
In 2007, while working for Chelsea, Rodgers was in contention for the manager’s job at Leicester with his boss from Reading a key element of his management team.
Speaking to The Scottish Sun Rodgers recalled: “I was working with the reserves with Chelsea and was talking with Leicester City about maybe getting my first job in management.
“I thought I needed somebody experienced to come in beside me. At the time, Milan Mandaric was the Leicester chairman and he was talking about a director of football.
“So I said: ‘Listen, if I am going to come to Leicester I would love to bring a guy in with me, Tommy Burns’.
“My idea was to get Tommy in to Leicester as a director of football, because he wasn’t really wanting to manage any more. He was here working in the youth department.
“I came up to see him and we talked about if I got the job at Leicester he could come in as a director of football; how one day he could come back to Celtic as a director of football and I could come back as a manager.
“That is how ironic it is. At that point, what he was talking about was being a director of football at Celtic.
“I will never forget the game. It was in 2007 and it was a home game against Hearts. I came up, met him in the hotel the night before, we had a great chat, I came to the game and we went back to his house to see his wife, Rosemary, afterwards.
“It was something he was keen to do from a football perspective. I think his family and Rosemary had been down south for a few years and wanted to be up here but it was something that made him think.
“But the only thing that was making him want to do it was the possibility of him coming back to Celtic one day as director of football with me as a manager. It is a poignant day really.”
With the images of Burns all around at Celtic Park and Lennoxtown Rodgers will never be far from memories of his former Reading boss.
