MORE THAN A POINT (GERS … 0 FC Barcelona … 0)

At the interval I felt like a gambling addict being hung over a 20th-story balcony by a money-lender’s body guards. There was still more than a fair chance I’d be allowed to plummet into the concrete below but if I’d survived this long - even with them punching my balls every now and then - there was a good chance I’d be hauled back up and allowed to punt again. If only I could avoid having a massive coronary before that point. Difficult ask, though - to retain a modicum of calm when your life’s continually flashing before your eyes in a daeglo carrot-coloured haze …

“I’m never gonna get to fight Joe Louis”. So says De Niro to Pesci. As they sit at the dinner table in the first act of Raging Bull, the mood is depressed.

Shortly afterwards the greatest modern movie actor of them all asks his on-screen brother to fashion a tea-towel into a make-shift boxing glove and punch him as hard as he can. Coz he’s, ye know, pyoor mental and dead hard. But before that he explains why he’s so upset about the rules which prevent a middleweight boxer like Jake La Motta taking on a heavyweight like Joe Lewis:

“Coz I ain’t never gonna get to fight the best - the best there is.”

And De Niro-as-La Motta also bemoans his small hands. The small La Motta family fists. It’s as if a whole set of physical impediments are hindering his ambition to be the all-time great pugilist he knows himself to be in his raging heart.

We have the small hands too. Rangers have been dealt the small hands. And we often don’t feature in even a middleweight league - at times the SPL is definitely veering towards the lightweight end of the scales.

We play in a country with a small population yet try to compete in the Champions League, where we have the transfer kitty of paupers in comparison to most of the clubs therein.

But tonight we got to fight Joe Louis.

This evening we went toe-to-toe with the Brown Bomber of European football, the Joe Frazier to Real Madrid’s Muhammed Ali. Barcelona came to Ibrox and battered us all round the ring, even had us on the ropes at times.

But the points decision was split. Evenly.

Tonight we took the robe off our heroes’ shoulders. We held our hands out for them to throw a few practise jabs. We cajolled them, warned them, inspired them and generally fucking LOVED them into an energy-sapping trench-warfare of defensive back-foot-stepping, ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving, soft-shoe shuffling bravery which might have us pissing blood for days but earned us a night of relatively AWESOME ALL-OUT GLORY.

This isn’t just La Motta hanging onto the ropes with his face mashed to pulp, muttering, “You didn’t get me down, Ray. Hey - Ray - You didn’t get me down” as the referee looks for a towel from the corner then lifts Sugar Ray Robinson’s hand into the air. No. This was no glorious failure. This was no “honour maintained in the face of defeat”. This wasn’t even a “moral” victory.

This was just a straightforward fucking TRIUMPH! WHAT A PERFORMANCE. What a display. What guts, balls, heart and lungs. GET IN THERE, GERS!! Pin hero’s medals on their RFC-emblazoned chests. This is a success as pragmatic as it is dazzling, as private as it is global.

The red, white and blue gum-shields were needed but, then, no-one expected anything other than a football pummelling from Barcelona. The fact of the matter is we all wrote-off these double-headed games and hoped we’d take our Champions League points from VfB and Lyon this season. We expected nothing and yet, DO ME A FAVOUR, we’ve gained so much.

I can’t believe what’s happened to us this season in Europe. I really can’t.

I still believe we may not only fail to qualify for the knock-out stages of this season’s Champions League but that we could very well still finish bottom of the group. But that’s just because a club as comparatively poor as Rangers in G-14 terms must always know the vicious mercilessness of Top Flight European football is ready to decapitate at any moment. There’s so much glamour in the Champions League but, as with all model agencies, it’s 100% ruthless:

We need “only” one more win but losing in the Nou Camp, the Gottleib Daimler or at home to Lyon is the kind of Rangers result which only a very particular kind of Bear would find surprising. Three games gone and the only two points we’ve dropped are to arguably the biggest club on the planet. Brilliant. Amazing. Beyond our wildest dreams when the group was drawn. But we can still finish bottom. And I certainly believe it’s barely more than 50-50 that we’ll progress to the last 16:

What I can’t believe, however, is that THIS season is the one where we make our best ever start to a Champions League group campaign. What is beyond my comprehension - even though I’ve seen it with my own two eyes - is that we’ve taken our unbeaten-over-ninety-minutes run in the Champions League proper to NINE STRAIGHT GAMES. That’s a sequence which includes home and away to Villarreal, home to Inter, away to Porto and now, OF COURSE, at home to BARCE-freakin-LONA!

If we get gubbed in Barca in two weeks’ time it’ll hurt, yes, but if our only two ECL defeats in 11 games came at the San Siro and the Nou Camp, I think we can be pretty darned proud. We’re excelling as a club:

When Walter returned I expected what happened on Saturday. Yup. Humping Celtic - the first time in half a century they’ve gone 3 straight Old Firm derbies without scoring (I must have missed that banner in the Broomloan at the weekend: “We had joy,we had fun, against Rangers we scored none”:-)) - that and maybe even winning the SPL in his first season back was pretty much on the cards when Waldo stepped into the Paul Le Guen “Bazzagate” detritus:

And I always WANT European progress and European glory for Rangers. I want it on the way a lioness wants a Wildebeast for breakfast. Now that I’ve lived to see Nine In A Row at Ibrox, continental success should always be the focus for us now as far as I’m concerned (Jings! If ye want to win stuff in Europe as Rangers then ye HAVE to do well domestically anyway - it’s a by-product):

But I never thought Walter would have us doing as much in Europe as he has already. As he said himself tonight, when he took over in January we’d just been pumped out the Scottish Cup by a Dunfermline side which, less than 11 months on, were pumped 5-0 in their latest First Division catastrophe. After the same time-span we’re now holding Barcelona to draws. I was at both games - conceding three to The Pars in possibly the worst defensive display ever seen from a Rangers team - and tonight, keeping the most potent attack in Christendom firing blanks. This is all in less than a year.

Keeping 3-straight clean sheets against bloody Celtic is miracle enough from Walter considering what happened in Fife that horrible Sunday last winter. But the European thing is just beyond the realms of reason. To qualify for the Group stages was already more than I thought Walter’d manage in 2007/2008. To avoid a serious tanking in every game in Group E was the next aim. Well, he managed all three points in his first game and then managed all three goals for us in the next - away to bloody LYON! Being second in the group, seperated by only one goal from Barcelona, was orgasmic enough after just two games. But to be in the same situation AFTER WE’VE ACTUALLY PLAYED THE CATALANS …!

Choked. Amazing.

I’ll tell yese now. If we make Europe after Xmas, as promised, I will never again raise the topic of PLG in anything opther than historical analysis. I always loved Walter but never thought he had more than one good European campaign in him. As far as I was concerned we’d had that in 1992/93. However, since he’s been away, he’s obviously been doing his homework. Walter’s obviously been studying the global game. “Scottish league?” he thought, “Been there - done that - seven times on my ownseome too. I can pull that off in my sleep now. Time to broaden my horizons.”

Tonight, for example, we were Greece 2004. The Divine Cardigan must have been over at Portugal three years back, seeing how you make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. Before we knew it he was doing to France, at Hampden, what Otto Rehaggel’s Helenic heroes did to them in Lisbon in the quarter-finals that famous summer.

And tonight Walter couldn’t quite conjure up a goal as he did in the Euro 2008 qualifiers. But he did pit our defence against the best array of attacking players in the world - and gave them NOTHING!

Thierry Henry. Lionel Messi. Ronaldinho. All aided and abetted by Eidur Gudjohnsen. And then Abidal’s getting in on the act. Puyol’s overlapping. Xavi and Iniesta are roaming around, behind their strike force like a pair of deady lock-picks. It was unreal. The threat we were under tonight was phenomenal. It was mobility and touch incarnate. The talent we had pinging balls through and around us was momentous.

But we held firm. We stood strong. We repelled and we repelled and - fuck it - there was NO SURRENDER in the face of the most relentless onslaught of super-stardom I’ve ever seen at Ibrox. We faced the Harlem Globetrotters and we DID NOT play possum.

Thank you, Walter. Thanks for providing the kind of night which I spent my whole life dreaming of and, yes, quite frankly, I am the kind of man who fantasises about 0-0 draws. When you know that the only chance your club and your country has of winning the major international trophies is by forming a defensive cordon so tight it leaves our opponents with chaffing on their chests, then THIS was a perfect vision of heavenly possibility.

Do this often enough and before you know it, you’re playing in European finals. Do it once and you know you can do it often enough. Draw at home with Barcelona, win 3-0 in Lyon and you know it CAN be done - that’s the first step enroute to making it happen.

And holding Barcelona at bay as we did this evening also allows the fans to feel the possibility. But, more than that, it allows all Rangers fans to experience a different culture amongst ourselves. For tonight we were as united as I’ve ever heard us at a home game - both with each other and with the players. Only the visit of Dynamo Kiev in 1987, when we cheered a Terry Butcher pass-back from half-way as if it was the winning goal in the World Cup final - could match it for me. If us Brits are best in times of hardship then this Barca blitz had us all huddling together in the sheltered stands, being extra altruistic in an effort to get through this hellish oinslaught.

It began with the most amazing card display I’ve seen yet. Paul Daniels eat yer heart out. And that’s saying something when we remember how good the old place has looked in a lot of recent European matches. Heart-felt congratulations and thanks to those who organised and came up with the “More than a club” message - so apposite - and the beautiful 1972 Cup Winners Cups in the Broomloan and Copland. Very emotional. I was holding up my part of the “A” of “than”, roaring the teams onto the pitch but eyeballing the images portrayed by the other stands with more admiration than I could ever muster for Ronaldinho and co.

When you have special guests you always do the house up nice. Barcelona weren’t just treated to a freshly-hoovered carpet and dusted surfaces - they were served from the best china and silver cuttlery. The palace was RESPLENDANT this evening. And Barcelona reciprocated by allowing us to have the blue and red kit - while they looked like the ten most expensive carrots in the world with that politely all-orange outfit.

And the respect for Barca and the love for Rangers came down from the stands in equal measure. It helped to create a night where almost everyone stayed to the final whistle and almost everyone shouted nothing but unrelenting praise for The Gers - even if Sasa Papac was just punting the ball out for a corner to the visitors. Every clearance, every tackle, every Ranger who even kept pace with the ever-changing potential angle of Messi’s shot as he sailed across the front of our box, was consistently cheered and encouraged in a way you almost never hear at Ibrox. This was not a night for moaning when you aren’t 4-0 up by half-time - it was a night to be proportionately appreciative that we weren’t 5-0 down after quarter of an hour. The Bears were brilliant.

And oh how those minutes DRAGGED by, bristling our nerve-endings with every tick of their tocks. When the goal-stand clocks got to thirty I was fucking delirious. As half-time approached Barca seemed to step it up to a ridiculous level of possession. How could the Rangers players even mainatin concentration with all this daeglo Jazz synthesis going on around them?! It was like trying to cap that olympic musical fountain at the foot of Montjuic with a collander - Barcelona poured through every minescule gap and flicked, jinked and chipped the ball amongst themselves with sight-defying ease. But they dug in, The Gers - they dug in like their lives depended on it. Our players knew getting to half-time at 0-0 would start planting the seed in Barca’s mind.

At the interval I felt like a gambling addict being hung over a 20th-story balcony by a money-lender’s body guards. There was still more than a fair chance I’d be allowed to plummet into the concrete below but if I’d survived this long - even with them punching my balls every now and then - there was a good chance I’d be hauled back up and allowed to punt again. If only I could avoid having a massive coronary before that point. Difficult ask, though - to retain a modicum of calm when your life’s continually flashing before your eyes in a daeglo carrot-coloured haze.

Maybe they’d settle for a 0-0 now.

I watched the clock more than the players from the moment of it being 59 til the moment it became 60. Believe me - THAT WAS MORE THAN A MINUTE!! But we got there too. Still intact.

Every free-kick we gave away in our own half was like a penalty to teh visitors. We had Big Amo on the pitch at half-time but even he would struggle to get a turn at banging one into the stand when yer free-kick rota includes Ronaldinho, Messi, Henry and … ach, you know the list by now. But they kept hitting them high and wide or off the wall or our goalie saved them like he did on Saturday - except this ref DIDN’T spot Al’s quick hands and let us away with a goal-kick. Still 0-0.

Alan Hutton was getting himself put right at the top of Joan Laporta’s shopping list. Charlie Adam was getting himself almost inside Ronaldinho’s shorts and Barry Ferguson was getting himself into every possible position by which he could relieve the pressure on our defence for even a second. But the clock turned from 69 to 70 as a helicopter hovered overhead. Helicopters are good luck for Rangers now - I’m sure I heard it change direction - and we were suddenly in the final third of the game - and still 0-0.

Super AL Mcgregor had turned that Ronaldinho free-kick onto the bar in the first half. Henry had missed that open goal with a non-header - just as he did agaijst Walter’s Scotland for France. Hutts had performed that mad, heroic sliding block in the first half also. At the time it may have made us lok as desperate as we were brave but now - with less than 20 minutes remaining - all those blocks and stops could be laced together in the collective psyche and shown back to ourselves as A SOLID PERFORMANCE. So we felt our confidence surge. And now we began breaking forward more menacingly. There was even a momentary HINT of the possibility of a goal.

I’ll tell ye troops - see that last 20 minutes/quarter of an hour - see the moments in that final countdown when we flashed the ball across their goal a few times (nae luck Bazz or Danny) and we grabbed a few corners… Oh man, see the PASSION! What was it like??!! It was AMAZING! It was electric. At one point I found myself grabbing my auld bar scarf and pulling it up to my lips and kissing it while stood on my feet screaming “You’re fucking Brilliant, Gers - FUCKING BRILLIANT - SHOW THEM.. FUCKING SHOW THEM!!”.

All they years of knowing we have never really shown the world just how big we really are. All those years of being a lovely secret but a secret nevertheless - when you see the best players and the biggest club on the planet stood right in front of you, struggling to keep YOUR team at bay… Oh, I don’t know how to describe it, troops. You were there - you felt it. It’s beyond pride. It’s like having Madonna in yer living room with a film crew which shows the world that, even in your apparent crudeness, you can actually sing and dance just as well as she can! Even if Barca had about two panicky momets in the entire 92 minutes, they were some of the sweetest moments I’ve ever felt as a Bluenose. As a fan so heavily invested in your club you suddenly feel it’s you out there on that pitch. It IS you too - your money, your time, your love - that’s what makes those players wear that Blue jersey. And so tonight we all took on Barcelona and, by the last few minutes, we’d ground them down. Messi and Ronaldinho ran down the clock as the blue wall barred their way to our box and as the recent memory of our forrays forward told them they’d best let us defend lest their nght got worse. Barcelona’s superstars were content to take a draw at Ibrox.

The Rangers AND our visitors were lauded off the pitch. The stands were packed when the final whistle blew.

We’d just seen saw the first ever competitive meeting between two of Europe’s most mythical clubs. And we saw the smaller of those clubs add to their myth by keeping it competitive all the way through. Barcelona don’t generally win competitive games in Scotland but to actually beat them is somewhat vulgar I find - rather un-gentlemanly. Having won our only European trophy to date on their famous ground, and having accidentally damaged a few bits and pieces in the celebrations, it was only right that we should allow our esteemed guests a point to take home with them this evening. Something for their trouble. Aherm …

My neck might have a crick in it from watching all that one-way traffic but it’s the most beautiful battering I’ve ever seen us take:

Those Catalans front men don’t run - they GLIDE. Barcelona, no matter the personnel, have always been the expert passers of the ball. But Rangers are Aye Ready. And we don’t sit back - we DEFEND. Wullie Woodburn and George Young were on that pitch tonight. So was Greig, Gough, Meiklejohn, Goram, Bobby Shearer, Jerry Dawson and Tiger Shaw. We’re the club who first put defence first. We’re the fans who know defence is one third of the game’s skills. We’re the club who had the “Iron Curtain” and who’ve now invented an Ibrox catenaccio.

We’re Rangers. You don’t have to be more than a club when you’re more than all other clubs - we’re THE club.

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Published:
10.24.07 / 1am
Category:
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