Celtic have already qualified for the Champions League Group stages and next week we’ll find out if Michael Beale’s theRangers side can join the Hoops in European football’s premier club competition for the second year in a row.
Each time Celtic, then under the guidance of Ange Postecoglou, qualified for the Group stages as Scottish Champions while theRangers had to come through the qualifiers, with a play-off round tie against Dutch side PSV both last summer and again this year.
Both first leg matches were played at Ibrox and both ended in a 2-2 draw, meaning that the match at The Philips Stadion in Eindhoven would effectively be a cup final for a place in the richest club football tournament in world football. Effectively these games are worth around £30m to the winners.
In 2022 it was the 2012 formed Scottish side than came out on top with a 1-0 away win to qualify 3-2 on aggregate, a stunning result for the then theRangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who the previous season led the new Ibrox club to their first ever European Final, losing to Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League Final in Seville in a penalty shoot out.
Unbelievably van Bronckhorst lost his job due to a combination of factors, losing all six Champions League matches – including a 7-1 home humiliation at the hands of Liverpool – and earning the unwanted accolade of being the worst ever performers of all time in the Champions League Group stages since this format for the competition began. That and falling behind Ange Postecoglou’s relentless Celtic side in the Scottish Premiership cost the Dutchman his job and opened the door for Michael Beale.
When both sides came through the previous round to earn a place in the Play-offs, PSV’s official social media account immediately called the second meeting with Rangers as a revenge match, and the Dutch certainly appear to be the stronger of the two sides on current form. Beale will be hoping that lightning can strike twice but some of the more realistic supporters of the latest Ibrox club will be concerned by his failure to win big matches when it matters most.All the relevant date on these matches can be found at BETER.
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The New Year’s game at Ibrox against Celtic was a must win for Beale but conceding a late goal to Kyogo Furuhashi gave Celtic a share of the points and maintained the nine points advantage. Then in the League Cup Final at the end of February, Beale appeared to get his tactics all wrong and Celtic won more comfortably than the 2-1 scoreline suggests.
Maybe it would be third time lucky for Beale in the Scottish Cup semi-final again against Celtic. With Inverness Caley Thistle from the Scottish Championship already through to the Final, both Beale and Postecoglou recognised that the semi-final was the crucial match in determining who would lift the famous old trophy at the beginning of June.
Again Beale lost out, to a goal scored by Jota, and yet again the Rangers manager was left looking for excuses and blaming his players. Next week is the biggest match of his time as manager of theRangers and it is going to take a result of the magnitude van Bronckhorst achieved last season to get his side through to the Champions League group stages. Otherwise he’s going to be under pressure domestically and his next home match is against…Celtic, now managed by Brendan Rodgers.
Never rains but it pours over in Govan.
Here are the highlights from last night’s game at Ibrox which finished in a 2-2 draw…
And theRangers like to think of themselves as the same club as the one that was liquidated and ceased to exit in 2012. With that in mind here are some combined club facts about their two clubs in the Champions League…
