KEIN KAPITULATION!!! (GERS … 2 VfB … 1)

From wonder-bra tae Wunderbar!! The Gers were squeezed and pushed around to look like massive tits on Saturday and yet, four days later, after hearing that oh-so familiar bastardization of Handel’s Zadok The Priest, we perform like a Bayreuth orchestra producing a Wagnerian Leitmotiv: We’ve seen it all before but it doesn’t make it any less thrilling when the might of the Bundesliga comes crashing to its knees at the Govan Valhalla!

They only scored when our inspired, inspiring captain was off for treatment to a battle wound. Within minutes of our Spielfuhrer retruning to the fray with a sticthed-up napper, The Gers were equalising, taking the lead and, as we’ve done in every game this season, performing twice as well in the second half as we did in the first. Once in front we were NEVER going to drop a point in this, the beginning of the REAL DEAL. Champions League is for big boys only - The DEUTSCHER-MEISTER just couldn’t handle such esteemed company …

Walter Smith kicks God’s ass! It’s official: The Divine Cardigan is a far greater deity than Jeusus’s useless old man. Never mind Adam and EVE - if God had wanted a pair of truly heavenly punters planted in the Garden of Eden he should have done like Waldo and started with Adam and HUTTON!! That pair looked into the eye of the evil asp tonight and decided, “nah - we’re NO SURRENDERING tae the temptation to roll over and die in the face of the might of the Champions of Germany”. They just got together to procreate one of the loveliest goals I ever did see and one of the most gutsy comebacks since some geezer rolled away a big boulder one year round about Easter.

Charlie Adam and Alan Hutton - holy smoke! What an equaliser - WHAT A FUCKING GOAL!. And how about two of the most sensational runs ever performed by a full-back at Ibrox, to create the kind of pulsating triumph which lives long in the collective Bluenose memory (What’s more, God could have taken a spare rib from each of Chas and Al and ye’d have avoided all the in-breeding problems we got with Cane, Abel and their sistah).

And what a sense of deja vu all over again! For Kevin Kuranyi opening the scoring at Ibrox on 16th September 2003 read Mario Gomez doing exactly the same on 19th September 2007: A multi-ethnic German international striker, a Stuttgart Torschützenkönig gives the boys from the banks of the Neckar a lead just after the half-way point - we all groan and sigh and moan because, while The Gers haven’t been overwhelmed, neither have we been threatening too much. But conceding the goal just annoys us - “us” being players, management, captain and punters in the stands; “us” being RANGERS - rouses us into action and inspires us to GET RIPPED RIGHT FUCKING IN!! THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO TO A SLEEPING GIANT IS WAKE HIM UP! AGAIN, TONIGHT, THE GERS WOKE UP TO THEMSELVES AND IT WAS BLOODY WONDERFUL TO BE THERE AS WE ROARED OUR TROUBLESOME VISITORS INTO SUBMISSION AND DEFEAT!

On Saturday, on this blog, we went through all the current parallels with 2003/2004. Let’s hope losing our sixth SPL game this time - against Hearts at Tynecastle, where we won our half-dozenth league match four years ago - cancels out the otherwise horrendous karma induced by our last 2-1 home win over VfB on Champions League Match Day 1. On the previous occassion we met the Stuttgarters at home, Manchester United were the biggest name in our group and they pumped Panathinaikos 5-0 at Old Trafford on the same evening. We all thought life couldn’t get any better. The Champs League is as cut-throat as using the razor yer wife’s just done her legs with so we all want the top seed to pump everyone else in sight to give us a chance of finishing second in the four-team table. Tonight Barcelona (ye might have heard of them) gave Lyon a 3-0 roasting at the Nou Camp. This same scenario four years back ended with us gaining just one more Champions League point, ending the season trophyless and finishing 17 points behind Celtic in the SPHell.

Okay - the black superstition to which I’m so supine is threatening to put a dampner on a great evening, I know. But I like to get the “feet back on the grond” stuff out the way first so we can spend the rest of this rant letting our hair down. It’s a bit like getting the grandparents off home from a family party - then everyone can swear, dance, and get pissed a smuch as they like, conscience clear. So, in that spirit, I’ll put my final RESERVATIONS into one last paragraph, which a tee-total uncle can then drive away as we all wave at it from the front steps, see into its house and then Unc’ can come back to the party via the chip shop. In more ways than one tonight we’ve got the “grannying” worry out the way:

Och, it’s not a reservation as such. It’s just the very least plus point we can take from tonight’s thoroughly thrilling theatricals: Being Rangers, a team from a small country with a currently rather shite league, there’s a very real chance that the Champions League can show ye up BIG STYLE. Teams from better leagues than ours have gone through this stage of the top UEFA tourney without picking up a single point. We’ve been under real pressure from the Smelltick for most of this 21st century yet they’ve managed just ONE SOLITARY POINT in THIRTEEN Champions League Group Stage away games. We tend to get points on the road but we lose a lot more at home than our seperated brethren from across the city. So, erm, what I’m trying to say is there is every chance we could end up going through a Champions League group, especially one as tough as this, without scoring a goal, never mind a point. It would not be beyond the realms of horrible possibility. It’s happened to other clubs in this competition and, in our second ever UCL Group Stage experience, against Steau, Dortmund and Juventus, we managed three draws but not a single victory in the whole round-robbin nightmare of merciless quality. The following season we also gained three points in total - this time from the only game we didn’t lose … and when we beat Grasshoppers Zurich at Ibrox we were already long eliminated from the competition. In a nutter shell, the very LEAST we took from tonight was our first point, our first three points, our first victory and the knowledge that we’ll still be in with a technical chance of qualifying from the group for at least two or three more games! It’d be crazy to predict this could be our best ever Champions League Group Stage campaign but, much more vitally, we already KNOW it wont be our worst.

And now - to the raw, pancreas-chaffing joy of this particular night:

I don’t know much about much. I’m not good for anything really. I’m almost 100% wrong even with my football predictions - and I think I know a LOT about football. So, when it comes to watching football and attending football matches and being obsessed with Rangers doing something significant in UEFA cmpetition, I’M IN MY ELEMENT! … largely because it’s the only element I have.

Therefore evenings like that just passed give me my one and only opportunity in life to ACT SMUG and have a chance of getting away with it. Very small personalities can survive on very, very small achievements. I’ve only missed two of the Champions League matches ever played at Ibrox. Shove in all the away games I’ve been to and I’ve seen over HALF the Champions League games Rangers have EVER played, ANYWHERE. Shove in my attendance at the 2002 final between Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen and I’ve attened more than half the Champions League games ever played in Scotland. See me - see European football - I’m dead cool.

I can rhyme off the stats and usually chuck in a casual “Oh yeah - I remember I was down the front of the Govan for that one” just in case anyone thinks I, ye know, watched it on the telly … or, god forbid, via a live web transmission.

Quite where the army of screaming teenage girls who desperately adore a man with an intense knowledge of how shite his team is in Europe are keeping themselves I don’t actually know. But I’m sure they exist. Probably in Japan. And they’ll think I’m REALLLY cool.

But I’m not. There’s no point in trying to pretend anymore. You’ve all seen the YouTube videos. No matter how old, fat and pretend-experienced I think I am, the UEFA Champions League, the European Cup, gets me in a fucking tizz EVERY TIME! It’s ME whose the soppy teenage girl, shrieking with hormonal confusion when I hear that music, see that bunting (they’ve changed it this season - it was BLUE tonight!), feel the weight of the bigger match programme. My first giveaway is when I can’t get my zip back up after my last pre-match piss. It’s always a sure sign that I’m overly excited, when I’ve yanked the zipper down so far that it’s actually jammed in the denim around my crotch. In go the fingers, back goes the nails and - AYABASTARDYE!!! - the first expression of pre-match tension is out there, totally betraying any affected calm.

By the time I’ve seen the pennants on sale which show the four crests of all four clubs competing and when I see the same vendors selling T-shirts of “RFC On TOUR” with dates next to Stuttgart, Barcelona and Lyon crests, it’s as if only a few weeks have passed rather than FIFTEEN YEARS since I was having a mild heart-attack some fifty yards from Mark Hateley’s mud-swept equaliser against Olympique Marseilles.

The advertising hoardings are different, there’s the UEFA flag over the stadium, there’s the big star ball in the middle of the pitch, even the photographers wear official UCL bibs. The punters around you are diferent and there’s a big new sign in the Govan concourse pointing towards “Partner seating area”. After seven shots at the Champions League I now know this is NOT a section of the Govan full of single women who might be interestd in a guy who knows exactly how shite his team is in Eur…

By the time the game kicks-off you’re right back to being 12 years old, shitting yourself that these Germans/Italians/French/Ducth/Swiss/Romanian/Englihs/Spanish foreign bastards will be just far too good for The Teds.

Tonight - they really weren’t.

But they were good. Mein Gott, they were good!

And always there’s that period of adjustment, as we see our heroes forced to step up from SPL to UCL. Our players KNOW it’ll be harder - they WANT to play that highest level of football - but the body still needs to oil those gears which just aren’t used against Gretna and St Mirren. We don’t get to play Werder Bremen, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04 in our domestic set-up - we really do have to acclimatise ourselves to the new level of skill and fitbess and TACTICAL NOUS.

Ah - the tactics. Walter got them so right. 4-1-4-1 apparently. Whatever - they resulted in 2-1 2-1 2-1 to The Gers and that’s all I care about. The opening flurry of acclimatising saw us ripped in twain a few times - Big Carlos looked shakey again but, then again, if he hadn’t hit it off his own post a Stuttgart player would have scored early doors. All the opening 20 minutes did was show jus just how good our visitors were, as if their Bundesliga title and the names on the back of theri shirts hadn’t already.

And the remaining 70 minute showed us why Walter had his tactics spot-on. On Saturday I lamented that we didn’t start against Hearts with one of Brahim or Barry - tonight we had both. Bazz was simply amazing, doing his bit to support the wonderously industrious and fabulously able Darcheville. Brahim and Kevin Thomson sat back, plugging the gaps which Stuttgart could see in ways SPL teams just don’t. By the last twenty minutes, however, they were going on mazy runs and setting up more steamroller Rangers attacks.

We weathered a storm, we lost a goal when a man short - great, instinctive, Muller-esque finish by Gomez - and then redoubled our efforts at the very time lesser teams would have cracked and failed. But then lesser teams aren’t allowed in the Champions League.

Charlie Adam produced a pearler of a finish - his cut inside and curling RIGHT FOOT shot were sublime, the kind of goal which deserves to see you end the night neck-and-neck on points with BARCELONA!!! - but the run from Alan Hutton to lay on the chance … BLOODY HELL, AL!!! I thought it was Whittaker at first. He was’t too clever tonight, Whittaker. Until he laid on the pass which won us the penalty which won us the game, we didn’t realise he was making such great runs and doing so much sterling stuff, simply because the end product was always a bit off-target. But I thought it was Whittaker doing the slalom run through the middle of the German Champions. And it wasn’t - it was Alan Hutton. A hero in Paris last Wednesday and a super-hero tonight with a mesmeric, exhilerating sojourn through a top quality midfield and defence.

See whan that ball went in from Charlie’s boot after Alan’s Maradonna impersonation - did you know it was a special night? I think you did. I think we all did. Old Lady Ibrox nearly spun off her axis and ended up landing in the Imax at the science Centre. I had to sit down for a wee minute, mid-delirium. It was another potential fainting moment, such was the sheer explosion of joy inside and outside my head.

And then we just NEVER STOPPED. We were a juggernaut of Scottish European GRIT and PURPOSE. Throw in some French-Algerian ball-skills, some French marauding of the opposition back-line, some Bosnian over-lapping and some Spanish clearances and a WONDERFUL SAVE BY ALAN MACGREGOR and you have me and fifty thousand other bears SAILING home on a cloud of tiny European Cups.

All it took was for ANOTHER wonderful run from Alan Hutton, this time including only one touch as the ball from Whittaker was so perfect. Portugese international and VfB league-winning captain, Fernando Meira was made to look like the biggest clugger who ever guarded the back-line for Saltcoats Vics, Pertershill or St Roch’s - he was so flummoxed by our pace, precision and passion that he just lunged into Hutton’s midriff and sent him spinning in the box. Yes, I’m sorry, I just have to mention the DM word one more time - the SPIELFUHRER of the DEUTSCHER -MEISTER had the utter pish ripped oot him by our right-back tonight.

The Darche slotted home from the spot AFTER the ball had been re-spotted CLOSER TO THE GOALS by the ref: Injured captains going off while we lost a goal, injured captains being given the chance to get back on rather than being replaced by a panic substitution, an utterly marvellous opposing team, and referees upping the tension at the decisive moment - nothing phased Rangers tonight. We looked so AT HOME at this level. I’m so excited I can’t fucking tell you - not so much about our future prospects in this group but simply by having experienced the kind of MAGICAL night the Champions League always promises. We could win no more points in this group - every Champions League match is a one-off cup tie for a club in our position - but tonight was one of the most memorable cup-ties I’ve ever seen:

John Brown came on during half-time to do the tombola. His ethos came down that tunnel with the entire Rangers team tonight. I’m really starting to love Wednesdays - they do things to your heart which aren’t recommended by the doctor, but one of those things is a severe PUFFING UP of the chest.

Happy days on the world stage - the only stage worthy of The Rangers.

(Oh, and HOW tall and skinny were they VfB payers??!!! I’m telling ye - they ALWAYS have those kind of players, VfB - there’s something strange about that club …)