FORTRESS IBROX (GERS … 0 La Viola … 0)

A fortress which just loves a siege. That’s Ibrox in 2007/2008. There used to be a castellated adornment on the old Ibrox press box, sat up on the roof but, five decades after the disappearance of that particular ornamentation, and 17 years after the dissapearance of the roof it sat upon, the red brick facade of the Bill Struth Main Stand has never looked so indomitable. Our curtain has never looked so iron. Our defences so solid, our barricades so manned. Old Derry’s walls have rarely been as well guarded.

We’ve attacked enough - just enough - but, as a Rangers fan, it’s about solidity rather than fluidity. When we do launch a raid and score a goal it’s only to give us more to defend. BRING IT ON we say. If you want to defeat us you have to beat us - at the back. You must attack. And we’ll push you out and push you back. Defenders of the faith. This UEFA cup campaign has been utterly heavenly. It’s been as azure as the sky above Ibrox at kick-off this evening, it’s been as glorious as the sunset over the new Main Stand roof - the one they started erecting when Walter Smith first became Rangers manager.

Everyone was happy tonight. Like Panathinaikos and Sporting Lisbon before them, Fiorentina have gone away with a goalless draw from the first leg and, from about the 70th minute they looked more than pleased to know we would let them have that scoreless draw if they and their manager - who dresses like John Turturro playing Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski - wanted it. They think the tie is over and they may well be right.

I feel we had to score tonight if we wanted to make the Manchester Final. But Werder Bremen are the only team to have left Ibrox this season with an UNDENIABLY POOR UEFA Cup result. Werder Bremen are the only team to have left Ibrox thoroughly miserable with what happened to them in Govan - and they then gave us our biggest roasting of the year so far: Werder are the only team to beat us over 90 minutes in the UEFA Cup this season. It’s almost as though we don’t WANT to win the home leg as it’ll tip of the opposition before the second leg. Whatever. Here’s hoping Fiorentina, like Panathinaikos and like Sporting Lisbon, will gain a false sense of secuirity from their inability to score at Ibrox.

In all probability that sense of security is actually very genuine and has a basis in some incontrivertable evidence. La Viola are a smashing side and Serie A teams, in general, neither scare nor concede easy. We will not worry them but that doesn’t automatically mean they’re getting cocky about this semi-final. Fiorentina, despite everything we’ve done this season on the road, SHOULD go through. In cold, hard, objective, rationalist terms, the Italians are favourites.

But since when did “should” count for fuck-all in football - especially with THIS Rangers team. That’s our hope. That’s why we, the Bears and we, the players in blue, were all happy tonight. I walked along the front row of the Bar 72 seats at full-time, travelled almost the full length of the front row of the top tier of the Govan Stand after I’d finished applauding my heroes down the tunnel. I walked along, above the Ibrox carpet (dog-eared as it is these days) and I began reciprocating the appause from the Fiorentina fans in the away corner. Some support - very noisy, very colourful, very big. They were in a good mood, just like the Panathinaikos and Sporting Lisbon fans I’d also eye-balled from above this season. But La Viola’s ultras were so happy they were actually being mannerly. We were so happy we were mannerly right back at them. Hope that augers well for the safety of the travelling Bears next week. It certainly augered well for a lovely, contented walk back to the car.

What started to concern me, however, as I drove back home, listening to the radio, was the sense from Walter Smith’s press conference and from what I myself had felt at full-time that TONIGHT was our final. There was a sense of achievement, of something having been completed. As I’ll discuss in a second, that’s EXACTLY RIGHT - we did complete a massive feat by maintaining a clean sheet across the entire breadth of our home UEFA Cup campaign: Rangers cannot now lose a home goal in this season’s UEFA cup, having played as many home and away ties as was possible for us - amazing! Yet, in terms of reaching Manchester on 14th May this year, we need to mainatin a hunger. To maintain the kind of focus to weather the atmosphere and the opposition provided in Florence next Thursday doesn’t just require hunger - it demands the rabidity brought about by near starvation.

In terms of European glory, Rangers FC are indeed thoroughly famished. We should have Ferguson and Thomson back for Italy but even our full strength team could be blown away by Fiorentina on a normal-to-good night. What we need, on top of our best available XI, is so much desire it hurts. Having slated the arseholes who booed the team off the pitch after the first leg of our quarter-final ended 0-0, I now have the gall to be worried by the fact the team got a standing ovation tonight!! I know! - I’m a knob! What AM I on about??!! I barely know myself!! I refused to stop applauding Rangers until they were all down the tunnel tonight. No-one was adding more to the sense of “job done - proud of yese, no matter what” than big, fat, handsomely stupid ME! And yet, I’m now concerned by that basic act of decent football fandom.

Okay, the players didnae take a lap of honour - hardly even a bow. That was left, in a lovely moment at half-time, to the stars of today and tomorrow, as the youth team which has just won the double and the boys fae the 1961 Cup Winners Cup final against Fiorentina took simultaneous bows on the pitch. But the tone of the press conference and the glowing pride I felt at a job COMPLETED has scared the shit out of me this last few hours. Maybe we needed a wee fly in the ointment to keep our men on their toes, mean and moody for the hell that will be the Artemio Franchi in seven days’ time. What could that have been, that annoyance factor? - a SCORE draw? A dodgy decsion by the ref which resulted in a goal for them or one being denied us? Did I want the players booed off the pitch again?? HELL NO!!! But I felt the general air of contentment, at what isn’t REALLY the half-way stage of the tie, was a very, very dangerous thing.

Something else: I still don’t feel we’re on the cusp of a European final. I don’t feel that “call” of Manchester - even though I’ll be going anyway.There’s no sense of having “one foot in the final” or being “90 minutes away from history”. I just don’t get that kinda vibe from this evening. It’s purely instinct but, well, there ye have it. We’ve had a major result but I still can’t look forward with any conviction - only back with an oil tanker-full of pride.

Maybe it was just the sound of Keith Jackson asking Walter a sycophantically-toned but minefield-laden question, along the lines of “ye’ve been GREAT away from home all season, Sir Walter - you SHOULD be CONFIDENT of SUCCESS in Florence next week, yes?”. I’ve seen this sleaze-ball in action close-up. At a press conf at Rugby Park a few years ago. I was in the press area (long story). Flo scored twice for us as we beat Killie 2-1 and Ally McCoist missed a penalty for Killie. Jackson, being as sickly sweet as ever, HAD to put the question to Bobby Williamson, then Killie manager: “Bobby some really stupid people - I mean, like, IDIOTS - would want to make something of the fact Ally missed that penalty against his old club. I mean it’s not as if - heh-heh - can’t believe I’m even SAYING this - it’s not as if Ally would miss it on purpose, is it???!!”. Williamson just smiled and said “No, of course not - that’d be silly” and moved onto the next question without blinking. Next day I see the back of the Daily Retard splattered with a Keith Jackson “Exclusive”: WILLIAMSON RAGES AT MCCOIST “FIX” TAUNTS! or some such hyperbolic claptrap. But, what bugged me most of all about hearing Jackson licking Walter’s boots on the radio tonight is that the last time I heard him do this was after we’d drawn 0-0 with Barca in the Champions League, again as I was driving back from Govan: “Walter, do you know that even if you lose your next two games in the group you still ONLY have to beat Lyon at brox to qualify…” I screamed at the fate-tempting cunt as he said that last year. I screamed at him again tonight as he smugly TOLD Walter there was no excuse for losing in Italy next week. Bad omen.

But that’s enough of my worrying. I did all that pish last night with my pre-match yammer: Yes, I did go on at length about the last time Fiorentina were here, and we failed to score. I did go on about the FAIRS Cup semi we played in 1969, when we also failed to score in the first leg at home. And I prattled on about he 92/93 game v CSKA Moscow - the last time we played at Ibrox with a possible European final place up for grabs - we didn’t score. Tonight we didn’t score again but, unlike 1961, 69 and 93 we did not miss a whean of chances coz this time we hardly created any!! - and DIDN’T CARE! So, by way of changing the tone, I’d prefer to look at the only two previous occassions a Scottish team reached the UEFA Cup final - Dundee United in 1987 and some other mob in 2003. Both played their semi-final first legs at home and drew, before winning away in the second leg. If I’m gonnae talk coincidences, patterns and suck shite I might as well go for a positive ones because, that’s what this Rangers team deserves, some fucking positivity from all of us - even a big superstitious wean like myself.

Hell, what about the fact we DREW 1-1 IN ITALY when we last reached a European final, eliminating Torino on the way to Barcelona in 1972. That kinda result would do us fine next week, as would the 3-2 WIN we gained the last time we went to TUSCANY ON UEFA CUP DUTY … Livorno anyone??

We want the final so bad and, if we got there, we’d want to win it so bad but did I not make a similairly desperate plea for simply maiking the semi-finals when we played Sporting??? I think I did. You always want nothing more than the next step … until you make that next step. This Rangers team is playing a massive game every time they step onto the pitch these days. The season is currently balancing on every kick of the ball for these players and if they want to take some sort of contentment, some sort of finality from tonight’s game then LET THEM, ECK!!! Because that way they will at least get some psychological rest between this endless run of pseudo cup finals. Walter and the players now NEED to be feeling “job done” after every game - coz it’ll let them unwind and refresh before the next one.

I was content tonight and I was proud - so unbelievably proud. We all were. We’ve played four UEFA Cup games at home and we haven’t lost a goal in any of them. We also kept a clean sheet at home to BARCELONA in the Champions League group stages after Zeta and Red Star failed to score against us in any of our FOUR qualifying matches. Oh and Chelsea - favourites to make the Champions League final, perhaps against Barca - also failed to score against us in an Ibrox pre-season friendly! All I’ve said all season is all I’ve said all decade is that all I’ve seen all my life is visiting teams always scoring European goals at Ibrox. That has always been the first sign of our lack of nous, our lack of competence. I just wanted us for once to be as street-wise as the guys who win European trophies. I just wanted to leave Ibrox after a European game, knowing there would be no more European football at Ibrox - not becasue we were out early but becase there were no two-legged games LEFT!!! NINE European home games in one season - we’ve only lost one and we’ve only conceded in two …

… Hairs. Neck. Up.

No-one has scored at Ibrox in the UEFA Cup this season except Rangers. And the home leg of the semi is now finished …

…Heart. Swelling. Rib cage. Bursting.

Being so unused to reaching European finals, it’d be amazingly obtuse to put an embargo on gratitude til such times as we’ve succesfully pulled off a minor miracle in the away leg of a semi. No. Let’s have it now. What Rangers completed tonight was a statement of competence the like of which I’ve never seen from my club - and the very essence of which I’ve always wanted. We can beat Celtic any old day. We can win leagues any old year. However, we’ve only ever reached three European finals. No matter what happens over there, next week, we tonight put a stamp of authenticity on our class which no Scottsh silverware can ever match. The whole of Europe knows Rangers are no-one’s mugs. The whole of Europe knows Barcelona, Wedrer Bremen, Panathinaikos, Sporting Lisbon and Red Star Belgrade couldn’t get past the Rangers defence in Govan. The whole of Europe knows. And , finally, having done it four times on the trot just to ram it in there, the WHOLE of the Rangers support now knows too.

We’re a proper European side.

The tourists who are always attracted to big European games and who the invcreased ticket prices allow through the gates, were still there tonight. They were scattered all around and the cretins who are there every week simply to slag the shit out of Rangers were still there too but the groundswell opinion was tacitly “boo and you’ll die”. Around the 79th minute we had to work the ball backwards again, and a period of attacking play was surrendered rather than the ball: An audible howl of derision got itself off the ground and, yes, some of them began booing:

I screamed. Thousands of others screamed. We shrieked and yawled our disgust and it mutated into a warning and, hopefully, an education: I simply emited a sound which contained the words ” …first time in 36 years…” and ” .. ya cuntz …” in no particular order or syntactic integrity. The vast majority joined me and - like that - the threat of the part-time, or the confused, or the hard of loyal holding the concensus was quoshed. Tonight we were going to give thanks, no matter what. If Rangers didn’t concede we were gonnae give worship.

And, save for one slight moment of confusion and a couple of great Alexander saves, Rangers have seldom looked LESS LIKELY to concede. Fiorentina were similairly comfortable at the back - true - but without Barry Ferguson as our out, as our point of reference, as our captain and best player, the main aim tonight was to keep a clean sheet. When your main aim becames your achievement, against such opponents, well - did I tell you I was proud of Rangers??

The Red of Fiorentina’s away strip, next to the all-blue of our European uniform actually gave our strips the look of Fiorentina’s famous violet home strips. Red and blue will combine to make violet on yer paint pallet. I just hope it hasn’t combined to show the colour of the winner of this semi-final. As I left the house for the game in my wee silver Eck-mobile a violet-cloured motor appeared in front of me, driven by a refined-looking lady. When dae ye ever see a VIOLET car??!! I couldnae fucking believe it! I caught up with it and tried to pass it for luck’s sake. Couldn’t. A bad omen? Havning paid my lucky pound to the baby-faced extortionists to mind my car mistur, I was soon walking up the tarmacked slope from Broomloan Road to point of entry. As I approached the stadium a group of four Firenze ultras came walking towrads me, making to pass but refusing to get out of anybody’s way. I was stone cold sober but psyched out my tits for the game and - more importantly for a coward - I was on home soil. So I did the old bitter sweet symphony shoulder-charge on the cunt at the end of the line. I put my stomach into it too so, really, the guy could have drowned! I just kept walking - he didn’t come after me. Good omen?

Rangers played like gods in defence tonight and next week we can add Ferguson and Thomson to that mix. Fuck omens!

My first live European semi final. Rangers first proper, home-and-away Euro semi for thrity six years. The daylight, the tension, the new mix of a crowd of tourists in with the regulars: All this combined to result in a slight diluting of the atmosphere at the outset. The Ibrox PA system drowning out the crowd noise right up til kick-off was also a bit stultifying. The style of the game - a chess match - didn’t lend itself to rabid roaring but some of us tried our best. By the start of the second half, when Nacho and Darche had their swansongs and Buffel and Cousin made their opening salvos, old lady Ibrox finally began to express what we were all feeling: That animalistic fervour - the kind of passion which frenzies - had us all hoarse and buzzing. The desire was manifest for only a few minutes overall but some of the singing and baying was as memorable as this European campaign itself - I just wanted a few moments of KNOWING I was in a European semi with Rangers and when those moments came it was powerful and life-affirming as, erm, fuck.

Ye can’t buy that kinda shit. Not even for £40.00 or £35 for season-ticket holders.

When we go over to Dougal, Zebedee, Dylon or wherever the hell we’re going next Thursday, ye can be sure the locals will create one massively intimidating mise en scène for our lads. We, the bears, couldn’t make Fiorentina crack tonight but we certainly gave ourselves and our players enough of a sense of occassion to remind us how well we’ve all done. That restaurant at Paisley Toll, under the angel, seems to be the link between 1961 and 2008: For years we’ve passed it by on the way back into town from Ibrox and I’ve always thought “I wonder if it was there in 1961 or I wonder if the owners CALLED it La Fiorentina BECAUSE of what happened in 1961″?? As a teenager and a guy in his twenties I wondered if we’d ever have a chance to enjoy that coincidence again. That restaurant - that team - this city. I wonder if any Fiorentina fans were in it today or outside taking photos. But what we do know is that, although Rangers didn’t score tonight, like Ibrox 1961 - neither did Fiorentina, UNLIKE 1961. We didn’t miss any penalties either. They are more than capable of hammering us in Florence but they HAVE to come out after us and we CAN hit on the break.

In that respect it’s like this Sunday. Two score draws in the next six days can seal our season as truly historic.

But I prefer it when we draw 0-0! What Eric Caldow couldn’t do in 1961, our players have been doing none too bad in 2008. Yup - Penalties will do for me!!

No matter what happens abroad though - in Italy or Hoopstonia - what’s happened at brox this season has been truly magnificent. For that, Rangers, we all say thanks.

[What? What d’ye mean, Walter? What dye mean “stick yer thanks!”??! Now, come on - take a compliment - I mean, don’t get all defensive on us …! Oh no, do - please do … STAY DEFENSIVE, WALTER!]

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Published:
04.25.08 / 12am
Category:
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