The journey to the Champions League group stages is a fraught one, all the more so for the fact that one slip can mean game over.

Despite the tense nature of the route towards the riches of Europe' premier competition, Brendan Rodgers was calm and composed as he surveyed his squad last night, a squad that he will entrust with taking Celtic back into the kind of company he believes they need to keep.

There have been just three new additions so far this summer - and the latest, Olivier Ntcham, did not travel - but there has not been any need for an overhaul in a team that swept all before them domestically last season.

The first step this evening will come against part-time side Belfast, but even as the bar raises itself significantly over the course of the coming weeks, Rodgers has a faith in the solidity of his squad, the reason for which he attributes to the mental fortitude they have built up over the last 12 months.

“What we have developed is a mentality and a one-ness that pulls you together. In every game that you play there is usually a question asked of you,” said Rodgers. “It’s not about the individual it’s about the mental qualities of the team. If you go to Ibrox, in front of 50-odd thousand, with 40-odd thousand opponents against you, you have to be ready. I think one of the things we tried to do was create and regulate pressure, so whether it’s tomorrow night in front of 10,500 we are regulating to deal with that. “

The game [last season] in Gibraltar was interesting. It was my first chance to see the team in a competitive fixture. The conditions were tough and difficult - but there was also a vulnerability there in the team. You sensed that.

“It was my job as a coach to make sure that game was never going to be a symbol of our future failure. It was never going to be an opportunity for me to kill the players.

“It was an opportunity for me to look at it and go ‘OK - there’s an issue here’. The club hadn’t qualified for the Champions League for a couple of seasons. So it was question of how I could help the players deal with this pressure, the mental side of the game.

“I knew that tactically and technically, we would get better as we went on. Now, 12 months on, I think we would all agree it is a different team with a different mentality in a different cycle of work.

"My team have proven it through the level of performance produced in some real big games – in finals and semi-finals and other league games where questions we asked."

Having taking some satisfaction from becoming only the third man to deliver a Treble to Celtic, Rodgers is nevertheless determined to eek out another level entirely at the club.

His own ambitions centre of making an impact in European football, the coveted environment where the respect and kudos that is absent from any domestic achievements will be afforded to his side.

"I know they can do it. The structure and the dynamic of the team is there now. It’s about building on it in the next years."

Meanwhile, the last time Brendan Rodgers was at Windsor Park it was as a nervous teen, twitching at the thought of pulling on the colours of his country against the reputable swagger of Brazil. Playing for the Northern Ireland schoolboys in 1988 against the inimitable South Americans is the last memory Rodgers has of setting foot in his country’s national stadium.

He will return there this evening having earned the right to his own jaunty step. Rodgers goes back to his homeland after writing his own chapter into the Celtic script and on the first step of a journey that ultimately he anticipates will lead back into the riches of the Champions League group stages, although he can be assured of a particular welcome as he return to home soil.

“The last time I was there was when I was 14,” said the 44-year-old Celtic manager. “Northern Ireland schoolboys versus Brazil, and I haven’t been back since. I was very nervous that night.

“I think Brazil played against all the home nations that year. It was the age group with the Scotland team which went on to reach the under-16 World Cup Final the following year.”

His opposite number tonight is David Healy, the former Northern Ireland striker whose name went into local folklore after aiding the downfall of Spain and England in his playing days. Few would expect the former striker, who spent the penultimate spell of his career with Rangers, to add Celtic’s name to his list of scalps.

Certainly, as a relaxed Rodgers looked ahead to the game from the team’s hotel base on the outskirts of the city last night, the Celtic manager was clear in his articulation of why the Parkhead side can go into the hostility of a stadium in which their own fans will be conspicuous by their absence and feel unburdened by any pressure.

Rodgers was born and brought up in Carnlough, with friends and family remaining in the Northern Irish seaside town. Celtic refused to accept their ticket allocation for the game after sounds of discussions with the PSNI, a decision that Rodgers admitted was a difficult one to take.

“I’m disappointed for the supporters of Northern Ireland, who travel over religiously every week and travel all over the world watching the team,” he said. “There is now a game on their doorstep and they can’t make it.

“I’m also disappointed for us as a nation. This is a different Northern Ireland. I know it’s the marching season and all that sort of stuff, but this is a new Northern Ireland and should have been a place where the Celtic supporters could come in.

“I’m saddened for Belfast, us and Northern Ireland that our supporters can’t be there. That obviously extends to family, friends and whoever else.

“I grew up here over many years when there were issues but Northern Ireland, and Belfast especially, is a different place. “