After Celtic were thumped by Barcelona 7-0 at the Nou Camp on Wednesday morning (AEST), manager Brendan Rodgers believes it could have been a different story had things gone their way in the 24th minute.
Lionel Messi opened the scoring inside three minutes, but Celtic looked to have a way back in the match after Moussa Dembele was fouled in the box giving the Hoops a penalty.
Dembele stepped up, but his relatively tame effort was turned away by Barca goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, and the home side then went on score another six in their rout of Celtic.
โMoussa was happy to accept the responsibility and the keeper read it and made a good save," Rodgers said.
โThat was a moment for us that needed to go our way. When the ball hits the back of the net for us it would have given us a lot of energy so I think that was a turning point.โ
Despite the result being Celtic's worst ever loss in European competition, Rodgers was adamant his side would take valuable lessons from the match.
โWe couldn't have come to a more difficult place in world football. This will be a brilliant learning season for us in the Champions League," Rodgers said.
โEven the older ones will learn from that and that will make us a better team. Tonight is one of the tough nights that you take at this level.
โThere can be no embarrassment as they do that to better teams than us. Professionally it is never nice when it happens. We gave away the goal early but I thought we came back into the game.
