TALKING RANGERS
ANDREI Kanchelskis first fell in love with the Old Firm fixture when legendary Soviet coach Valeriy Lobanovskiy showed him videos of it after training one day.
But it wasn’t until he ended up with a broken arm after his first meeting with Celtic that he really understood what it was all about.
The former Dynamo Kyiv, Manchester United, Everton and Rangers winger returned to Ibrox Stadium for the first time in decades last Saturday as part of a promotional tour for his new autobiography, Russian Winters.
While a tame 2-0 defeat against Hamilton Academical wasn’t exactly how he would have remembered it from his time winning Trebles and titles at the height of the Dick Advocaat and David Murray era, he was received warmly by fans at half-time and there was the added poignancy of witnessing his stricken occasional firstteam rival Fernando Ricksen being wheeled out pre-match.
“I remember when I started to play for the USSR under Lobanovskiy,” said Kanchelskis.
“He was a great coach and he brought some video tapes to a meeting with the players. He told us to watch this game as it was the best football. And you know what game it was? Celtic v Rangers. He was telling us to look, this was ‘real football’.
“He said this was about fighting, there were a lot of tackles and no space to play,” the former Soviet Union and Russian international added.