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‘Managing a lot of Premier League teams like a holiday compared to Celtic’

The Football Interview is a new series in which the biggest names in sport and entertainment join host Kelly Somers for bold and in-depth conversations about the nation’s favourite sport.

We’ll talk about defining moments, career highs, and personal reflections, as well as motivation and mindset. The Football Interview brings you the person behind the player.

After a knee injury ended his professional football career at the age of 20, Brendan Rodgers has been a manager for almost 20 years, but he has also been a coach for much longer.

After travelling around Europe to learn coaching methods from different countries, Rodgers became a youth team coach under Jose Mourinho at Chelsea in 2004, before taking his first steps into management, aged 35, with Watford four years later.

Former manager of Reading, Swansea, Liverpool, and Leicester, who is now 52, is currently in his second spell at Celtic. He has won four Scottish Premiership titles, as well as two domestic cup victories.

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What does football mean to you, Kelly Somers?

Brendan Rodgers: Football, for as long as I’ve known, has been my life. I’d often say to my children, “This ball here has taken me around the world and given me an amazing life.” That has purely been from when I was a child just loving the game and watching the game. I have a photo of my broken leg from when I was just two. It’s actually how I became left-footed because I used to kick the ball with my right foot. My brother pushed me out of the pram, and I broke my leg, and they said I’d always wanted to play football. I started kicking with my left foot and when I got the plaster off, I was all left-footed. I had a very, very good time playing football when I was there. For as long as I’ve known, it has been a part of my life.

Kelly, do you recall your first true team?

Brendan: I didn’t play my first 11-a-side game until I was 13. We loved football but never had a team in primary school. I never had a team in secondary school but it was through friends at secondary school. They requested that I come along and play for them because they used to play for a team called Star United in Ballymena. That was virtually my first game.

Kelly: When you first started playing in the system, you might have realized you could succeed.

Brendan: I’d always hoped that I could. You are always unsure of the chance when you pass through those age groups, of course. Because I wasn’t playing in teams, I remember I’d read the Shoot magazine and there was the Bobby Charlton Soccer School and I must have annoyed the life out of my mum and dad with saying, ‘ I needed to get to it ‘ – and I was able to go there in the hope I could maybe be picked up. The ultimate goal was to move to England and work full-time.

Kelly: You were this young boy with a dream of being a footballer but it didn’t go probably the way you would have hoped at that point, I am guessing…

Brendan Rodgers stands with Jose Mourinho at Chelsea when the current Celtic boss was a coach at the Blues AFP via Getty Images
Kelly, your coaching journey started out quite interesting, wasn’t it? Where did you go to learn your craft?

Brendan: I had visited Barcelona and Spain. I was always interested in youth and I tried to earmark clubs that really had that top-to-tail philosophy – so from the very top of the club right through to the bottom there is a sort of synergy there. That matched my opinions of the game, which is technically a game. I also went to Sevilla and Valencia and I was in Holland as well – to Ajax and FC Twente. For me, seeing how young players are developed in Europe and how that process differs from how we develop our own players was the starting point.

Kelly: Moving on to you going to Chelsea, would you say that was your first big coaching job?

Yes, Brendan. I think it shone the light on me probably a lot more. Reading was a fantastic club that looked after me as a player. I ended up being academy manager there and had a great spell of nearly 14 years there. There was no denying that going to Chelsea with Jose Mourinho in to determine where they wanted to go as a club and how they wanted to change the youth section, where they were only in the door for two or three weeks, and there were four or five prominent coaches associated with my position. I had never had that before. I first spoke with Jose, who said, “You will have at least 12 names associated with your job when you are at these top clubs.” It will be the same with me as a manager. Work hard, perform well, and everything will work out.

Kelly: That must have been an incredible learning ground and taught you so many things you still use today…

Brendan: I had the chance to work with some outstanding young players and world-class players, and I also had the chance to work with the first team more closely. At that time it was John Terry, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and Claude Makelele – to be around that and see how they live their life every day, how they train and operate… it set the bar for me because everything they wanted to do was world class.

Kelly, you have worked for a wide range of clubs since then, starting with Watford, Swansea, Liverpool, and Celtic twice. How you would you sum up your coaching journey, and has it surpassed your expectations?

Brendan: I think I was very proud of my first managerial job when I realized I would manage the clubs I owned at the age of 35 and that I would be sat here after that.

Kelly: What was that like in itself?

Brendan Rodgers being thrown into the air by Swansea players after beating Reading in the play-off final AFP via Getty Images

Kelly: If you could relive one match, what would it be?

The play-off final, Swansea v. Reading, stands out because it really pushed me. To get Swansea into the Premier League as the first Welsh club to arrive there and knowing how much it meant to people at the time…

Kelly: Isn’t it the worst game in football to lose and the best game to win?

Brendan: 100%. Due to the drama surrounding it and the significant Wembley Day, if you knew you could do it, you would accept it even more than you could win the championship. That was special. I had the honor of winning awards here with Celtic, which was unique to me. Winning the FA Cup for the first time in Leicester’s history was special. However, I believe that the Premier League match only made things better for me when we played well.

Kelly: Has there been a turning point in your career?

Brendan: I can go back in time. My cousin Kieran McMullan in the little village where I was from. He and the neighborhood football team would meet outside the pub and play together. I wasn’t allowed to go in the pub when I was younger. The team would meet there to play games and be seated outside. Guys would come out of the pub and just go past me into the car, but he always made sure I got in a car so I could see the football. That is something I never forget. For the remaining years of my childhood, that got me started in football. I might have started playing Gaelic football or hurling instead if he hadn’t taken the time and care to look after me.

Kelly: You’ve managed numerous clubs in England and now you manage one of the biggest clubs in Scotland. How does managing Celtic compare to the pressure?

Brendan: It’s a real unique pressure. Celtic is right up there with the most pressured positions in football in terms of pressure. Even when I was managing Liverpool, you might have drawn with Manchester United and you wanted to win, but it wouldn’t have been the worst result. With Celtic, it’s expected to win every game, not just to win the game, but to do it in a way that is associated with the club. The club was the first British team to win the European Cup. In a manner that established the foundation of this club, they did it. It’s not just about winning. It’s Celtic, but it’s much more than that. The mental fortitude you need to show here as a player, as a manager, under the spotlight is huge. It would be like taking a vacation compared to managing Celtic and Rangers, which are both very popular Premier League teams.

Kelly: What’s the proudest thing you have achieved in your career?

Brendan: I believe that my path to becoming a manager was different in the beginning because of my experiences. That is the biggest achievement for me. I want to continue to be as successful as possible, and I mean helping players develop, improve, and improve the conditions in their lives. If that allows me to win trophies along the way, then great. My favorite job is being a manager.

Kelly: If you could only achieve one more thing in your career, what would it be?

related subjects

  • Scottish Premiership
  • Celtic
  • Football

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    • 16 August
    BBC Sport microphone and phone

Does each boat strike off the coast of Venezuela save 25,000 US lives?

According to Donald Trump, president of the United States, recent military strikes on five Venezuelan boats have saved “at least 100, 000 lives” due to their deterrent to drug smuggling.

At a press conference held on October 15th, President Donald Trump stated that “every boat that we knock out saves 25, 000 American lives, so every time you see a boat and you feel bad, you say, “Oh, that’s rough,” but it’s also rough if you lose three people and save 25, 000 people.

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The administration did not provide documentation that the boats had drugs in them. Venezuela’s role in the US drug trade is understated, according to drug experts, according to PolitiFact. The strike’s legality is also a mystery. Some legal experts told PolitiFact that the military action was against international maritime law or human rights laws and that it amounted to a direct assault on US forces after the first attack in early September.

Trump has repeatedly used the figure, and he also asserts that similar land-based strikes are possible.

In a speech to US Navy sailors on October 5, Trump said, “Everyone of those boats is responsible for the deaths of 25, 000 American people and the destruction of families.” What we’re doing is actually an act of kindness, according to the article.

Trump stated on October 7 that “we’ve taken a very hard stand on drugs,” saying that “the water drugs – the drugs that enter through water – are not coming,” that “there are no boats any longer, to be honest, there are no fishing boats, there’s no boats out there, period.” By removing those boats, we have probably saved at least 100,000 lives, including those in the United States and Canada.

Trump’s statement is inconsistent in many ways.

Drug experts have told PolitiFact that there is no way to find out how many lives have been saved as a result of drug interception efforts.

Additionally, if Trump’s claim had been accurate, the deaths of five boats in less than two months would have saved nearly twice as many lives as drug overdose deaths annually.

No evidence has been presented by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration hasn’t specified what kind of drug or quantity was on the ships that were struck. Therefore, it is impossible to calculate how many deadly doses could have been eliminated.

Trump claimed that fentanyl was being transported aboard the boats at the media conference on October 15.

Trump said, “And you can see it, the boats get hit, and you see that fentanyl all over the ocean.” It’s similar to carrying bags. It can be found everywhere.

No bags of drugs are visible in the videos, which he shared, shared, and shared with others about some of the boat strikes on Truth Social.

Additionally, Mexico, not Venezuela, is the source of the majority of fentanyl in the US. According to the US Sentencing Commission, it enters the country primarily through the southern border at authorized ports of entry, and it is mostly smuggled in by Americans.

Trump’s statement is mathematically dubious, even if there was fentanyl aboard.

If the boats each had 25 000 lethal doses, that doesn’t mean that the strikes prevented the deaths of 125, 000 drug overdose victims.

The supply chain partially replaces lost drugs when drugs are seized, according to John Caulkins, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who works on drug policy, PolitiFact.

According to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overdose drug deaths have been declining for the past few years. Before there have been any strikes on boats off Venezuelan waters, these figures are outdated.

More than 73, 000 deaths occurred between May 2024 and April 2025, according to the CDC. For Trump to be accurate, 125 000 deaths from overdoses on five boats would have been caused by the drugs, nearly twice as many as in a year.

How many overdose deaths were prevented, according to data from drug intercept, but that is unknown.

Trump is not the first to attribute the saving of lives to drug enforcement. We’ve fact-checked, spoken with, and influenced politicians over the years when they claimed a certain number of seizures at the US border would kill a certain number of people or that those seizures would save a certain number of lives.

The politicians we fact-checked frequently referenced fentanyl seizures. The majority of US overdose deaths are caused by synthetic opioids. The lethal dose of fentanyl, two milligrams, is used to support politicians’ claims about saved lives. For instance, if authorities seize 10 milligrams of fentanyl, according to politicians, that would save five lives.

Because a person’s height, weight, and tolerance from previous exposures can affect a dose’s lethality, according to drug experts, there are some caveats in this calculation. And how many drugs enter the country don’t get taken into account according to statistics about how many were prevented from entering the country.

Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, a Johns Hopkins University health policy expert, told PolitiFact in May, “We don’t have any method I’m aware of for translating drug seizure data into any measure of overdose deaths averted.”

Our decision

Trump remarked that “every boat that we knock out saves 25, 000 American lives” in relation to the boat strikes off Venezuela’s coast.

Trump claimed that drugs were being transported to the US from the five boats that the US military attacked off Venezuelan coast. However, Venezuelan experts told PolitiFact that the nation only participates in the US drug trafficking.

No documentation is available from the administration regarding the quantity or type of drugs claimed to be present on the ships. Due to the lack of information, how many lethal doses of the drug could have been eliminated.

Even though the boats each had 25 000 lethal drug doses, 125 000 lives were saved by destroying them. There were 73, 000 US drug overdose deaths from May 2024 to April 2025. That would have resulted in 125 000 deaths, nearly twice as many as US overdose deaths in a year, from the drugs used on the five boats.

How many lives have been saved, according to the number of drugs that have been stopped from entering the US.

South Koreans freed from Cambodian scam centres return home under arrest

According to South Korean authorities, dozens of South Korean nationals who had been detained in Cambodia were taken into custody and detained for allegedly engaging in cyberscam activities have been taken back home.

A South Korean police official told the AFP news agency that officers had detained the passengers on a chartered flight that was being driven from Cambodia.

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The official stated on Saturday that “64 people had just flown on a chartered flight to the Incheon international airport,” adding that all of the passengers had been detained as criminal suspects.

Earlier this week, South Korea dispatched a team to Cambodia to look into the kidnapped members of the Southeast Asian nation’s online scam trade.

According to Wi Sung-lac, the South Korean national security adviser, the detained people were both “voluntary and involuntary participants” in scam operations.

The repatriation agreement with South Korea represented the “result of good cooperation in the suppression of scams between the two countries,” according to Cambodian Ministry of Interior spokesman Touch Sokhak on Friday.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, when many Chinese-owned casinos and hotels turned to illegal activities in Cambodia, online scams have increased.

Tens of thousands of workers operate industrial-scale scam centers, which frequently target people in the West in a highly lucrative sector that is responsible for the annual theft of tens of billions of dollars.

Pig-butchering, an apex for fattening up a victim before they are slaughtered, frequently involves shady cryptocurrency investment schemes that build trust over time before the money is stolen.

In Laos, the Philippines, and Myanmar, where abuse and imprisonment are the most frequented, parallel industries have flourished.

Diffusion of large-scale scam operations in Cambodia employs an estimated 200 000 people, many of whom are wealthy and politically connected, and are employed by scam companies in many of the country’s wealthy and politically connected areas. According to estimates, around 1, 000 South Korean nationals make up that number.

A Cambodia-based multinational crime network, known as the Prince Group, was put on full sanctions by the United States and the United Kingdom on Tuesday for operating a number of “scam centers” throughout the area.

The Prince Group, which promotes itself as a legitimate real estate, financial services, and consumer businesses company, was linked to 19 London properties worth more than 100 million pounds ($134 million).

According to the prosecution, Chen Zhi, the head of Prince Group’s Chinese-Cambodian tycoon, boasted that his fraudulent activities were making $30 million a day at one point.

According to the UK and US, Chen is wanted on suspicion of wire fraud and money laundering. He has advised Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, long-ruling former prime minister Hun Sen.

If found guilty, he could spend up to 40 years in prison.

The UK and US’s action against the Prince Group came as South Korea announced a ban on certain travel destinations in Cambodia on Wednesday amid growing concerns about its citizens’ entry into the scam industry.

A student from a college in Cambodia who was allegedly kidnapped and tortured by a crime ring will also be the subject of a joint investigation led by South Korean police, according to a statement released today.

US jury finds French bank BNP Paribas complicit in Sudan atrocities

A New York jury has found that French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan helped to prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, making it liable for atrocities that took place under his rule.

The eight-member jury on Friday sided with three plaintiffs originally from Sudan, awarding a total of $20.75m in damages, after hearing testimony describing horrors committed by Sudanese soldiers and the Popular Defence Forces, the government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed.

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The plaintiffs – two men and one woman, all now American citizens – told the federal court in Manhattan that they had been tortured, burned with cigarettes, slashed with a knife, and, in the case of the woman, sexually assaulted.

“I have no relatives left,” Entesar Osman Kasher told the court.

The trial focused on whether BNP Paribas’s financial services were a “natural and adequate cause” of the harm suffered by survivors of ethnic cleansing and mass violence in Sudan.

A spokesperson for BNP Paribas said in a statement to the AFP news agency that the ruling “is clearly wrong and there are very strong grounds to appeal the verdict”.

Bobby DiCello, who represented the plaintiffs, called the verdict “a victory for justice and accountability”.

“The jury recognised that financial institutions cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions,” DiCello said.

“Our clients lost everything to a campaign of destruction fuelled by US dollars, that BNP Paribas facilitated and that should have been stopped,” he said.

BNP Paribas “has supported the ethnic cleansing and ruined the lives of these three survivors”, DiCello said during closing remarks on Thursday.

The French bank, which did business in Sudan from the late 1990s until 2009, provided letters of credit that allowed Sudan to honour import and export commitments.

The plaintiffs argued that these assurances enabled the regime to keep exporting cotton, oil and other commodities, enabling it to receive billions of dollars from buyers that helped finance its operations.

Defence lawyer Dani James argued, “There’s just no connection between the bank’s conduct and what happened to these three plaintiffs.”

The lawyer for BNP Paribas also said the French bank’s operations in Sudan were legal in Europe and that global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) partnered with the Sudanese government during the same period.

Defence lawyers also claimed that the bank had no knowledge of human rights violations occurring at that time.

The plaintiffs would have “had their injuries without BNP Paribas”, said lawyer Barry Berke.

“Sudan would and did commit human rights crimes without oil or BNP Paribas,” Berke said.

The verdict followed a five-week jury trial conducted by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last year denied a request by BNP Paribas to get the case thrown out ahead of trial.

Hellerstein wrote in his decision last year that there were facts showing a relationship between BNP Paribas’s banking services and abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese government.

BNP Paribas had in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97bn penalty to settle US charges it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to economic sanctions.

The US government recognised the Sudanese conflict as a genocide in 2004. The war claimed some 300,000 lives between 2002 and 2008 and displaced 2.5 million people, according to the United Nations.

Al-Bashir, who led Sudan for three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 following months of protests in Sudan.

He is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on genocide charges.

In the months that followed al-Bashir’s ousting in 2019, army generals agreed to share power with civilians, but that ended in October 2021, when the leader of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, seized control in a coup.

Meghan Markle’s reinvention branded ‘a mess’ in critic’s damning verdict

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The suggestion that Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, will reinvent herself by pursuing success in the beauty and fashion sectors has skepticism among both her and the public.

Today, Meghan Markle’s resemblance to the artist has been criticized as “thoughtless and directionless.”

The Duchess of Sussex appears determined to pursue a venture in the fashion world following her appearance at Paris Fashion Week. Since the trip, the 44-year-old star was praised for her “first positive PR” in several years and some experts expressed confidence Meghan will succeed in the industry.

But now other PR experts have hit out to blast the duchess, who met all-powerful global Vogue boss Anna Wintour and with American Vogue’s new editor, Chloe Malle, at the Balenciaga show in Paris. It is today argued Meghan’s sudden burst of activity hasn’t been well thought through and could be counterproductive to both her and Prince Harry.

“This has no strategy,” he said. She has nothing to announce, nothing to say, and nothing to launch. It is thoughtless and directionless. It’s a mess indeed. The Sussexes appear to be spiraling. The source claimed that they are aiming spaghetti at the wall and observing what sticks.

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But as Harry and Meghan’s Netflix contract ended in the summer, it is thought they are looking – both together and separately – at new opportunities, with some chatter lingering Harry, 41, could return to royal duties.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, the well-placed source said, of Meghan: “It is evident that either she isn’t being advised properly or else she isn’t listening. Honestly, whoever is in charge shouldn’t even be putting this stuff in front of her, to protect her from herself.”

Put alongside Meghan’s glittering praise on which The Mirror reported this week, the latest assessment cuts a harsh stance. However, it comes amid reports the former actress has made the front cover of a global fashion magazine – said to be Harper’s Bazaar – despite the duchess having “nothing new” to plug.

Her PR team simply doesn’t have a plan for her, just putting her out there. She is not being selective and keeping herself safe. They appear to believe that every media opportunity is worthwhile, the insider continued.

Continue reading the article.

Meghan’s trip to Paris, during which she was snapped modelling numbers by Balenciaga, led to criticism earlier this month. She was pictured using the same route Diana, Princess of Wales was driven moments before her tragic crash in August 1997.

The Duchess of Sussex was seen in footage with her feet up on the chair in the car, just moments from the infamous Pont d’Alma tunnel. This led to claims – rejected by the duchess – she flouted a “blanket ban” Harry had imposed on Paris due to the association with his mum.

Boots’ £13 cream in Molly-Mae’s ‘top products of all time’ for ‘glowing’ skin

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Fans will be tuning into the second season of the mother-of-one’s Amazon series this weekend.

With Molly-Mae Hague returning to TV screen this weekend for the launch of her new Amazon Prime docu-series, most of her fans are invested in the star’s daily routine, which she regularly shares online. Sometimes, she goes into detail about the type of products she loves, and some are surprisingly affordable given her A-list budget.

You would expect someone like the former Love Islander to have an exclusively luxurious line of beauty products in her arsenal. While there are some pricy products in her rotation, not everything is bank-breaking – and even affordable for the average person.

The mum-of-one raved about one moisturiser that’s earned a spot in her top three favourites “of all time.” It’s available on the high street, dermatologist-recommended, and costs less than £15 a pot.

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The Aveeno Face Calm and Restore Oat Gel Moisturiser is available to buy at Boots for £13.49. There are similar products available elsewhere that use the oat gel formula, such as the PURITO Oat-in Calming Gel Cream from LookFantastic (£16.99) or the AproDerm Colloidal Oat Cream on Amazon (£4.99).

But, the Boots buy has been backed by Molly-Mae – and thousands of other shoppers who cannot get enough of the “flawless” results. One said: “ It leaves my skin soft and smooth without any greasy feeling. The texture is light, kind of between a cream and a gel, so it’s great for both morning and night.”

Another put in their review: “ Applying each morning and evening the gel absorbed into skin quickly and has such a cooling feel which I just love. It’s not heavy at all like some creams and doesn’t leave a sticky feel to the skin.”

A third wrote: “ My skin seems so much more hydrated than before and the cream just smells fabulous. It’s gorgeous as it doesn’t feel oily and makes your skin actually moisturised and not just stuffed with product.”

Someone else said: “ This is such a gem – affordable moisturiser suitable for sensitive skin. It has creamy gel texture that glides on a skin and instantly calms it down. A little goes a long way too and make-up seems to sit well on top.”

There were a few critics in the Boots review section. Some felt the results were “barely noticable” and others suggested that “ the consistancy has changed”.

Continue reading the article.

Another claimed: “Stung my face and was red for hours Bought as it’s supposed to be calming and hypoallergenic.” A third wrote: “Moisturises well and it has a lovely oat scent, but causes spots and irritates the skin.”