Brendan Rodgers’ task is to turn Leicester City’s talented young squad into believers too

It’s an issue of delusion: convincing people that the best times are yet to come, even though deep down everyone knows that’s not true

Winning the league was the big mistake. Oh, sure: it made a lot of people abundantly happy, deliriously happy, and not just in Leicester either. But it does bind you slightly, this knowledge that whatever you strive to achieve over the rest of your days, nothing will ever feel quite that good again. When you’ve walked on the moon, where’s the fun in walking to the shops? When you’ve tasted the greatest glory, how do you get yourself up for a sturdy seventh-placed finish and a crack at the Europa League?

This is the intractable problem with which every Leicester manager for the next two generations will grapple. It’s not an issue of expectation, because nobody seriously expects Leicester to repeat 2016. It’s more an issue of delusion: convincing people that the best times are yet to come, even though deep down everyone knows that’s not true. It’s a job for a master manipulator; a sultan of spin; an extraordinary evangelist. Enter Brendan Rodgers.

Five days ago, Rodgers was wearing a green-and-white striped tie, dissecting a 4-1 win over Motherwell with the Scottish press pack, complaining about the visitors’ controversial goal and insisting that he was fully focused on Celtic despite interest from Leicester. Doubtless, he believed it too. Even now, as he sat down at the King Power Stadium for his first press conference as Leicester’s new manager.

The decision, he said, “wasn’t easy at all”. The timing, he admitted, had not been ideal. He fully understood why Celtic fans have been spending the last days crying foul and flooding the internet with snake emojis. “You traded immortality for mediocrity,” read one banner at Celtic Park on Wednesday night, their first game after his departure. He saw the banner, agreed with the first bit, disagreed with the second. “I certainly haven’t come into a mediocre club,” he said. “I respect that people will hurt. But hopefully in time, the measure of my success there will be what we did on the field.”

In short: sorry Celtic fans, but I’ve moved on, and in time you will too. And there is, perhaps, more than one way of looking at this. The cynic would observe that Rodgers has finally allowed his head to rule his heart. Better money, a bigger transfer kitty, superior players, more eyes. The treble-treble was within reach at Celtic, 10-in-a-row, the unstinting love of Glasgow’s green half and – more impressive, actually – the grudging respect of its blue half. Now he’s jacked it all in for the chance to move Leicester four places up the table. Does he genuinely believe that’s going to be what gets him out of bed in the morning?

The optimist – and Rodgers is nothing if not one of those – would counter that actually, it’s the other way round. That Rodgers has traded in the comfort and the adulation for something harder, less achievable. That in many ways, he’s taken the ultimate gamble: to convince a club with the most unfathomable past to believe in its future. That he’s putting his neck on the block and his reputation on the line. That actually, this is the romantic option.

It’s actually the second time Leicester have come calling. The first was back in 2007, when chairman Milan Mandaric was looking to replace the sacked Martin Allen with another young manager. And Rodgers was seriously young at that point: 34 years old, a youth team coach at Chelsea without a single minute of managerial experience. He met Mandaric in London’s Mayfair and discussed the role with him for five hours. Eventually Mandaric went with Gary Megson instead. “I wasn’t ready,” Rodgers admits now. “I was very lucky.

“Twelve years later, I’m enriched by all my experiences, good and bad. But I’ve always tried to remain committed, and always positive. The word you sometimes get is “deluded”. People will say that because you’re positive, you might be deluded. But I’ve always been optimistic in my coaching life. And the experiences have been great.”

He uses the word, not us. And although Rodgers is really no more “deluded” than any other top manager – I mean, have you ever listened to Pep Guardiola? – perhaps he’s seen the popular parody Twitter account in his name. Self-belief has been the making of him. It’s taken him from a playing career of no great import to the verge of the Premier League title. That 2013-14 season with Liverpool, in many ways, still defines him, for better and worse. He rejects the suggestion that his team cracked under the pressure.

Brendan Rodgers at the King Power Stadium this week (Getty)

“People talk about pressure,” he says. “People look at that period and talk about ‘getting over the line’. Winning a title is across 38 games. The last 14 games, we won 12 and drew one. We were playing absolutely brilliantly. Then we had what happened against Chelsea [a 2-0 defeat when Steven Gerrard slipping over to allow Demba Ba to score], and that was the game that changed it for us. It was unfortunate. Stevie was brilliant for me in those couple of seasons. There’s no point dwelling on it. I don’t think about it every day.”

Liverpool were never quite the same team after that Chelsea game. And understandably, Leicester have never quite been the same team since Andrea Bocelli cleared his throat and belted out Nessun Dorma at the King Power in 2016. “I think what’s happened here,” Rodgers says, “was all very natural. You see it in sport, you see it in business. You think of the journey this club was on, from being in League One, getting promoted, to then staying up by the skin of your teeth.

“And then bang: you win the league. Then at the end of the season, you go on a world tour and it’s great and everyone’s lording you because of what you’ve done. Then you travel to Hull and you lose 2-1 in your first game. Then, after nine or 10 games, everyone’s wondering: what’s happening here? It’s very, very simple. There’s a little bit of complacency. I don’t think it’s intentional. It’s just gradual. You don’t quite run the same: where you pressed for 10 metres, you’re now only pressing eight. But everyone still expects.”

He believes he’s a better coach now: 46 years of age, with trophies in the cabinet and time on his side. He wants to get Leicester playing his brand of football: passing and pressing, aggressive and quick and intense. He judiciously refuses to answer when asked whether Leicester’s current squad, grown weak and puppyish under Claude Puel, are currently fit enough to play that way. “With training,” he eventually says, “they will get there.”

Above all, Rodgers is a training-ground coach. Gerrard has described his training sessions as some of the best and most competitive he had ever experienced. And while there are justified question marks over his recruitment record, you can’t deny that Rodgers adores footballers, adores working with them, adores the idea of improving them. He’s a friend first, a boss second, an adherent of the continental-style possession game third. He inherits the fourth youngest squad in the Premier League, exciting players like Ben Chilwell and James Maddison and Harry Maguire, and the measure of his success here will be the quality of the tune he can get out of them. European qualification is the first target. A trophy of some sort is the next.

As you walk through reception at the King Power Stadium, the first thing you pass is a giant Buddhist shrine installed by the club’s Thai owners: the Enlightened One sitting atop a plinth, flanked by carved wooden elephants. The next thing you pass is a scale model of the Royal Barge Suphannahong, the most spectacular vessel in the king’s fleet, with a giant swan’s head and encrusted with gold lacquer and glass jewels. The king and his family sit in a golden pavilion built in the middle of the boat.

To the unbeliever, it’s little more than gaudy kitsch. To the believer, it’s a place of strange currents and strange powers. It’s telling that Rodgers already feels so comfortable here. “It just feels as if... I’ve been here longer,” he says. “This feels the right club.” And indeed, you’d probably have to be a true believer to take on a club like Leicester at this point in its history, to show them where they’re going and convince them it’s as good as where they’ve been. In a way, it would be the most beautiful delusion of all.