Tavernier: We will just get better and better
James Tavernier insists Rangers will channel the hurt of their Europa League heartache into Saturday’s Scottish Cup final, and beyond.
The captain must pick up his team-mates – and himself – from the devastation of defeat on penalties by Eintracht Frankfurt in Seville on Wednesday evening and bid for more silver ware against hearts in the domestic competition, at Hampden.
The challenge ahead is heightenednot just by the emotions of the Europa League final shootout but also the quick turnaround for the match. With the chance of winning silverware still on offer, Tavernier insists they have to respond well.
“It’ s hard to take. i’ m not going to lie. It’s very hard to take,” the captain said. “2008 was the last time we were in this final. We want to be in these games, playing against the best in Europe. We have to use this as fuel, especially for this weekend and we have a very important game.
“It was a massive night, and we obviously wanted to put it over the line but didn’t. We’ve got to win this Saturday, no matter what. We will just use this as fuel, as motivation. It’s a cup final. There is silverware to be had.
"We’ve got a great backroom staff who look after all the lads with the nutrition, the physios and the masseuses.
“There are top professionals in that changing room. We’ll do our very best to get back into peak condition for Saturday and we’re going to give it everything. It’s the last game of the season and I know every single one of the boys will be fired up when that whistle comes."
Lifting the spirits may be easier said than done. Disconsolate fans lined the streets of Seville in the aftermath and Rangers themselves rallied around Aaron r am sey after the welsh man’ s missed penalty proved crucial in the shootout defeat.
While Hearts is an immediateopportunity to bounce back and show a positive response, longer term, Tavernier believes Seville can be motivation to strive for more improvements at home and abroad, and strengthening with Champions League qualifiers to come in a couple of months’ time.
“This is not the end of us. This is the start of something special with this team,” he continued. “We want to be building from this to make the fans proud and really push on from this moment. The manager said he lost the World Cup final but it’s football.it’sveryhardtotakebut it’ s got to make you stronger and we’ll be back fighting again.
“We have gone toe-to-toe with some of the best clubs in Europe. we have no fear whoever we’ re up against. we’ ll continue to have that same mentality. Any team we come up against, we’ll go toe-to-toe with.
"With the squad that we’ ve got, we’re always going to continue to build on it and bring players in. We’ll continue to build. That’s what we’ve been doing over these past few years. This is the best squad I’ve been with and it’ s only going to continue to get better and better.’
It’s difficult to weigh up what the biggest miss for Rangers will be after the Europa League final versus Eintracht Frankfurt.
Of course, Aaron Ramsey’s penalty was the most significant of all on the night – the only one in the shootout not converted – but the ramifications of defeat in Seville were still being weighed up the morning after the night before.
Champions League qualification or the Europa League trophy? That is the question.
Rangers were 12 yards away from a place in the Champions League group stages and all the riches that come with it, seeded first, the additional £4.3 million financial bounty of the European Super Cup, winners’ fees and more.
Now they face two qualifiers in July and August for a second chance – another early campaign start – but even the clamour for Uefa’s premier competition and all its associated prestige seems a little removed from the immediate sense of disappointment and loss in the Estadio Ramon Sanchez-pizjuan.
This was Rangers’ chance for a second European trophy in 50 years. The first for a Scottish team in four decades. That is what the fans flocked to Seville to see, not a team qualify for six guaranteed matches with a bit of glamour next season.
It was about the trophy.
That is why the Rangers supporters were slumped on the kerbs at full-time. They had fantasised of the trophy, what the team had made them dream of through an epic European journey.
Rangers might still get through to the group stages anyway. After all, they claimed the scalps of Borussia Dortmund, Red Star Belgrade and RB Leipzig on this European run. But win that tournament? That’s not a realistic expectation.
Wednesday night was. Rangers had the chance to become club legends, immortalised forever.
Scottish teams have reached ten finals in 62 years, four in the past 40. This doesn’t come around often. “Make us dream”, the fans said. Better teams than Eintracht Frankfurt had been beaten along the way to Seville.
It had taken 17 games to reach the final, a herculean effort in itself, but add some unforgettable nights and the elimination of some of the biggest names in European football heightened hopes.
That sort of demanding run can’t be a viable expectation every single season either, even if the coefficient is improved, but Rangers’ (and by that measure Celtic’s) best chance of European success lies in the Europa or Conference League, outside the billionaires’ playground of the Champions League.
This is why Wednesday was such an opportunity and why the primary disappointment on Thursday morning is that James Tavernier did not wake up next to the Europa League trophy. The party occasion that fans had travelled far and wide to be part of now an anti-climax, torn away in the narrowest, most punishing of circumstances. What might have been.
It might mean they don’t make the Champions League – at worst they will return to the Europa League – but Rangers had the chance to be legends until Kevin Trapp stopped Ramsey’s penalty, drained all the anticipation away and denied the Rangers fans the sight they had waited so long for and come from far and wide to see.
The dream continues to be just that. The rest will wait.