Rangers must defy weight of history if they are to avoid finishing the season empty-handed
NVery few can juggle Europe demands with need to win a trophy at home
OW and again, there’s a feature in the paper on the plight of working mothers. Nicola Horlick or someone will pop up asking if it’s possible for modern women to do the whole career, children and physical perfection thing without ending up burned out and swigging Prosecco at 9am from a bottle in a brown-paper bag.
The question facing Rangers now is a variation on the same theme. Scottish clubs don’t trouble the latter stages of European competitions very often and, when they do, something usually has to give.
Juggling the demands of Europe with the need to win a trophy or two at home is not easy. Very few manage to pull it off.
Jock Stein’s Lisbon Lions won every trophy they entered in 1966-67, including the European Cup. Look back at the nine occasions when a team from Scotland reached a European final, however, and only three times has that side won their domestic league in the same season. That was Celtic again, in 1970, when they still featured a healthy smattering of Lions, and Rangers in 1960-61.
Stein’s Celtic explain why the Ibrox side failed to win the league in two of the three years when they reached the final of the old European Cup-Winners’ Cup. Not even when they won it in 1972.
And while Aberdeen won three league championships during the halcyon days of Alex Ferguson, the season they lifted the Cup Winners’ Cup — 1982-83 — wasn’t one of them.
The exertion of reaching a European final can sometimes be so gruelling that a team loses the wherewithal to win anything at all.
Dundee United made it to the final of the UEFA Cup in 1986-87 and lost the two-legged affair to Gothenburg days after they’d blown yet another Scottish Cup final against St Mirren.
The last of Celtic’s three European finals, meanwhile, was the UEFA Cup of 2003 when they lost to Porto in Seville.
You’ll still find Parkhead punters who wouldn’t swap that experience for anything in the world because they haven’t come close to matching it since.
Yet, when they look back at old pics of their sunburnt coupons they won’t find any of their team holding a trophy aloft. Rangers won the domestic Treble that season.
The tables turned a little in 2008. Lifting the league and Scottish Cups, Walter Smith’s Rangers would probably have won a domestic clean sweep but for the physical demands placed on the players by a run to the UEFA Cup final in Manchester. Celtic snatched the league on the final night at Tannadice as the Ibrox side staggered and stumbled over the line knackered.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst would bite your hand off for a last-day title showdown now. But the reality is that you never really know where you are with this Rangers team. They can go from heroes to zeroes in the blink of an eye. In Europe they’re a different animal. There’s a dynamism and energy which they never quite manage to replicate in domestic football.
Three days after thrashing Borussia Dortmund in Germany, they dropped two points against Dundee United. After knocking out the team currently sitting second in the Bundesliga in the return leg, they dropped another two at home to Motherwell.
When they saw off Red Star Belgrade, meanwhile, they lost the opening goal against bottom side Dundee before claiming an unconvincing win.
A lack of energy after big games in Europe might offer an explanation for the laboured displays domestically.
The one thing it never offers is a free pass. Reaching the semi-finals of the Europa League will buy the manager and players some goodwill. It won’t last if they keep losing big games to Celtic.
After a home defeat to their bitter rivals in the league two weeks ago, it felt like their campaign might peter out. Six points behind Celtic — with Alfredo Morelos missing for the season — their league hopes looked over.
Since then, Europe has been medicinal. Kemar Roofe’s extratime winner on Thursday sealed the club’s first European semi-final in 14 years. And suddenly the champions are daring to dream once more.
The challenge for Van Bronckhorst is to find a way to maintain the momentum and energy of the triumph over Braga at Hampden tomorrow.
If he can, Rangers will head for Parkhead in two weeks with a cup final to look forward to. A title challenge would be back on.
Another defeat to their city rivals and the euphoria of Europe will slide faster than Rishi Sunak’s approval ratings.
The irony of a Europa League final in Seville this season should be lost on no one.
When Celtic reached their first Euro showpiece for 33 years in the Spanish city, Martin O’Neill’s side fell short in every competition in Scotland. A week after they lost the League Cup final to Rangers at Hampden, they crashed out of the Scottish Cup in Inverness.
Four days after losing to Porto, they thrashed Kilmarnock on the final day of the season, but lost the league on goal difference.
To avoid the curse of Seville, Rangers really need to win at Hampden tomorrow.
They need to hope that the confidence they took from reaching a European semi-final drags them through the physical demands of playing the relentless Daizen Maeda. They must hope that ‘born-again’ Borna Barisic continues his revival. And that Roofe gives Cameron Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt more grief this time than he did two weeks ago.
They could have done without 30 minutes of extra-time the other night.
When the nerves were jangling, however, they pulled through. They answered the lingering questions over their resilience and big-game mentality.
No team capable of thrashing the tournament favourites Borussia Dortmund, weathering a storm in Belgrade and quelling some Portuguese men o’war can be described as weak under pressure.
It’s to the credit of this Rangers side that they’ve smashed the myth that Scottish teams curtailed by a poor television deal can’t compete in Europe.
To reach a semi-final in this day and age is an outstanding feat.
If you’ll forgive the Carrie Bradshaw Sex And The City vibe, however, there’s a question they really have to step up and answer in the next two weeks.
Can a Scottish club winning games in Europe really have it all? History shows it’s easier said than done.