Brendan Rodgers
Leicester City are in the Europa Conference League to win it – even if manager Brendan Rodgers didn’t realise his side had qualified for it. They were demoted to the competition after dropping from first to third in their Europa League group when they lost their final game, a 3-2 defeat at Napoli. After that match, Rodgers admitted he didn’t know what the Conference League was, such was his focus on the Europa League, but now City are lining up in the tournament, they want to write their names in the history book as its inaugural winners.
Brendan Rodgers said: “After the Napoli game, when I was asked, I genuinely hadn’t given it any thought whatsoever, because your mindset is always to finish in the Europa League in the highest position and progress to the next round of that. I didn’t realise we were in this competition. Like most of us, I grew up being aware of three European competitions, when I think of the European Cup, the Uefa Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup, and of course now that we’re in this competition, we want to win it, and we will give everything we can to do that. We’re looking forward to the challenge and looking to embrace it.”
The winners of the Conference League qualify for next season’s Europa League, and with City among the favourites to go all the way, it may be their best route to a third straight European campaign. However, Rodgers is not giving up on a top-seven finish in the Premier League, even with his City side currently 11th, and trailing seventh-placed Wolves by 10 points.
Brendan Rodgers said: “We can finish in the top seven, we have an opportunity to still do that. We want to finish as high as we can in the league and if we show the level we did in the second half at the weekend, with returning players, I believe we can have a positive end to the season in terms of the league and this competition. You’re in it to try to win it, and whichever one of those brings European football, that has always been our aim at the beginning of each season, to be in Europe.”
