JOHNSTON: BIG CHANGES IN EUROPE
IBROX director Alastair Johnston insists a major shake-up of European football is on the way – and Rangers have earned their place in a new-look set-up by getting to Seville.
The former chairman predicts a massive overhaul of the game across the continent will be railroaded through within the next 10 years, following the botched move to create a Super League for the elite just last April.
He insists his own club has proved its credentials to be involved in the plans on the back of a spellbinding run by Gio van Bronckhorst’s stars to the Europa League Final.
And Johnston – who has returned to the Gers board – says the hierarchy now plan to sound out their own fans to see if they would back a move away from the current domestic set-up and its perpetual two-way tussle with Celtic for top-flight supremacy.
Johnston said: “I don’t want to say the board are getting ahead of itself. We have to make a choice. What the fans want us to do is instrumental in the way we go.
“But there has been an awakening. I am pretty well tuned into what audiences in sport are doing and what the media reaction is.
“What Rangers did in the last week or so, it has made the world sit up and say Rangers are an appealing team, with good players, they just need a little bit more of a shot in the arm with respect to having bigger budgets.
“We are punching way above our weight when it comes to Europe.
“But Rangers are not going to every year pay 10 per cent of what other teams are paying their players and expect to do well in European football on a consistent basis.”
Johnston, though, believes this season’s run – and next week’s final with Eintracht Frankfurt – has whetted the appetite of Rangers’ fans for a more glamorous menu.
He went on: “There is no question about the fact that when you are playing in the Europa League – we realise it is not the Champions League but it is a high quality – it is a step above the domestic competitions that 90 per cent of the teams play in their own countries.
“If Rangers are going to proceed into bigger leagues there is going to be a real chance of that happening within the next 10 years because the football landscape in the next 10 years is going to be significantly changed.
“Foreign owners will bear their influence, their money and their aggression to create a restructuring of the game.
“They are not paying all that money without there being some ambitions.
“The big five football countries will be under pressure from investors and those with an appetite to make the top clubs’ European tournament which failed the last time.
“It was mishandled and it didn’t understand the most important thing which is what the supporters think – but it is not going to go away.
“Beating Celtic and winning the Scottish league is still going to be important to large swathes of the Rangers family.
“But on the other hand, what has happened in Europe this season has actually been an eyeopener for what might be as far as Rangers fans are concerned.”