Celtic villain of the past warns Brendan Rodgers what's coming as Dinamo camp declare 'you can't surprise us'
Marko Pjaca reckons he can eclipse the most beautiful night of his career by bagging another hat-trick against Celtic.
The Dinamo Zagreb striker rifled a 36-minute treble to help the Croats dump Ronny Deila’s side in the Maksimir Stadium almost exactly a decade ago. Having been around Europe after a £20 million transfer to Juventus and spells at clubs including Schalke and Fiorentina, Pjaca is now back in the Balkans with his sights on Celtic again. The 29-year-old revealed: “That was definitely a beautiful match. 10 years ago, my hat-trick, my three goals, definitely the most beautiful match in the whole of my career.
“I believe in myself, although I didn’t get another hat-trick in the whole of my career, but there are always the matches that open up for you that you get a little bit lucky and you score three goals. I believe in my team and definitely it would be even better than 10 years ago because those points would get us much closer to the play-off and that would be really important for us in this part of the season. I hope I don’t have to score three goals, but I would be really, really happy if we won.”
Pjaca is one of the key senior figures who will be needed by coach Nenad Bjelica, who is coping with an injury crisis and a run of five games without a win. The coach needs to call up kids as he explained: “A few of the junior players will be with us. We have 15-16 professional players and I definitely think that my team will be ready to play. I’m definitely an optimist. In my life I’m an optimist.”
Bjelica believes in his shorn squad, but is wary of Celtic’s ability as he said: “The team is very good with very good individual players. They have a good leadership, 4-3-3 system with very powerful wingmen. With players who run really fast. They control the game good. Three Japanese players of a really good quality, but all of the other players who will play, they have the complete team available.”
Bjelica reckons Brendan Rodgers has a luxury he doesn’t share as he continued: “They rotate the players. So the coach, when he leads 2-0 at half time, then he can rotate his players. It’s easier than for us in the Croatian League.
“So their quality is definitely really high and they definitely deserve to be the first team in their league. They play really attractive, but we also believe in our good qualities. We definitely have some of them and we hope that we’ll be able to neutralise their good qualities.”
Bjelica has had no previous exchanges with Rodgers, but insists he can’t be shocked by anything the Celtic boss conjures. He explained: “I never played against him, but he’s definitely a high quality coach. He worked really well and successfully in Liverpool and I don’t have anything else to say about him.
“I don’t think he can surprise us because practically all of the matches that we analysed, they play in the same way. They don’t have many different systems. They have a clear system of playing. They play at the same level in Europe and in their league. Maybe some players can challenge us, but I don’t think that will be a huge, huge part.
“We analysed all of their matches in the last maybe seven or eight matches that they played similarly, but in some matches, there were other players. But all in all it was very, very similar style of game, so I don’t think there will be something, some big differences.”
