Brendan Rodgers wants Celtic to get out of his tiebreaker of the Champions League against Bayern Munich without regrets.
Visitors continue 2-1 entering the second stretch on Tuesday at the Allianz Arena and the manager accepts that he will take a performance of the highest quality to succeed, but emphasizes that it is a challenge that he and his players “want to hug.”
“There is no second chance,” Rodgers said. “We have to be intelligent, bright and brave and, if we can do that, the story has shown that everything that can happen can happen in sport.
“You come to this level and you have to play without fear. There are worse things in life than to lose a football game, so we want to make sure when we enter after the game, if we do not happen, we have absolutely everything.”
The Bayern, winners of the tournament on six occasions, are undefeated in their last 20 games at the Casa de la Liga de Champions.
Bundesliga leaders have never lost to Celtic, winning four of the five previous meetings, while Celtic is still waiting for a first victory in Germany after 15 attempts.
But Rodgers is becoming a heart of a strong final in Glasgow, with Daizen Maeda withdrawing a goal for his side after the blows of Michael Olise and Harry Kane.
“I am so happy to have this group of players with incredible mentality and professionalism,” Rodgers added. “If they show that we then know that we are with a chance.
“While you can take that opportunity to give your best, you can enter and say ‘the best team beat us’. Repentance is that if you don’t do it and you just get too late.
“We have shown that when we can play at the top of our game and if a team is not at its best, then we can punish them.
“We have done very well to get to this point and when you do you are going to play high -level teams. This is a team that has world -class players. For us it will be about our group.
“Everyone will see this game with us as a loser, but we are still very aware of being super competitive and, if we can play at our level, we can make the game very difficult for Bayern.”
