Brendan Rodgers: Driving with a forklift truck and getting the ferry to play games on the island of Wight helped me to make the manager I am today

Even though he closes as manager at 800 races, Brendan Rodgers Does not look at the end of his career. The start of it remains a touchstone every day.

A promising midfielder with Ballymena United, he arrived in Reading as a teenager hoping to make it football in English.

A knee injury contracted at the age of 20 turned out to be an unwanted wake-up call in Sleepy Berkshire.

Unwilling to give up his dream, the Northern Irish still tied the boots for Non-League Newport when he started coaching. The fact that the Semi-Pro club was based on the island of Wight was no obstacle.

“We trained in Basingstoke and then on Saturday I would meet the boys on the ferry and go there and play there,” he remembered.

“Some guys there … Some could have been brilliant players. But the application was not quite what you want, so that’s why they were there.

“It was a brilliant enchantment. But it was just because of the love for playing, I knew that I wouldn’t be the professional I wanted to be, but I wanted to stay in the game. ‘

His work ethics, however, was always Herculean. While he continued to come for non-League parties Witney Town and Newbury Town during the weekend, he had responsibilities to meet.

“I was completely qualified on the old forklift truck, he revealed. “I worked in the John Lewis partnership. Their head office is in Bracknell.

“I would be at half past four in the morning. I would do that three or four times a week to get extra money.

“I would do six in the morning in the morning. Then I would coach at night and follow the courses and try to play.

‘Do you know what? That made me what I was.

“I loved football and that made me realize how much I loved it.

“It paid for me to get my qualifications and in the end I was offered a full -time job when reading.”

It put him on the radar of Jose Mourinho. Rodgers was asked by the Portuguese to initially move to Chelsea as a youth coach then as a spare manager.

“I never intend to be a manager,” said Rodgers. ‘I was going to be the best youth coach I could be.

“Before you know it, I worked with some of the best players in the world at Chelsea and those guys really dropped the seed to manage it.”

He remembers his first experience as it was yesterday. He moved to Watford and took the lead for a first team for the first time against Doncaster in November 2008.

“One everyone,” he remembered. ‘I went home that night and slept like a log in the next day.

‘It was a change because I went inside to bring in my philosophy and it was not what the team was used to. So it took some time.

“From there we slowly got better and better.”

However, Rodgers was in a hurry. He abruptly left Watford for a return to reading. Although that didn’t work, he had made a big impression for Swansea to come and call.

He created history by taking them in the top flight via the play -offs in his first season, the first Welsh side to did this, and kept them.

He was close by but not close enough to end the Liverpool generation on the title.

The only foot he had in his first enchantment at Celtic was the abrupt way of leaving.

A FA Cup victory at Leicester underlined his talent. Despite the controversy around his exit from Parkhead, he was the obvious choice to replace Ange Postecoglou.

On the edge of another Treble, the next time he leaves Celtic, you will not come a minute early for the chase package.

However, you do not detect that he still longs for that day.

“My first target was 1000 games, the inspiration was to achieve that,” he said.

‘Of course as you get closer, you want to continue the journey. I think I am still relatively young as a manager, 52, so as long as the passion is there and I can work as I want with professionalism and dedication that I will continue.

“But I also know that life is short. There are things that I would like to do more of, with regard to family and spend time with them.

“That’s why I should break before I returned to Celtic. Now I am in it, I love being here.

‘I know I would miss it after a few weeks. When I left Leicester, it was in my mind to have that period.

“But I knew six weeks later – my wife even said to me – I wasn’t ready to have a year out.

‘I love every moment to be back, not only on a professional level, but also on an emotional level.

‘Since I left Noord -Ireland at the age of 16, I have lived in the United Kingdom, the south of England, south of Wales, Cheshire, the Midlands, Merseyside.

“And can say that here feels at home. The journey on and next to the field has been fun. Hopefully that can continue. ‘

From that first taste of the management game on Vicarage Road 18 years ago it has changed and that also applies to the job.

“The media part of it has grown,” he thought.

‘There is much more information that causes more problems to deal with. ‘Players are different, especially the new generation that comes through. It has no influence on me because I have always been an empathetic coach.

“If you want to have a long service life in the game, you have to adjust and change as the generations change.”

Rodgers did that just as well as all his peers. A day after lifting another league trophy with Celtic, a further recognition of his performance will come when he will be awarded the William Hill SFWA manager of the year tonight.

“My journey is different from most managers, but I enjoyed it every second,” he thought.

“I have a lot of reason to thank football in size 5 because it brought me all over the world, that ball ball.”