Bad memories of 2008
Rangers call out to fans: “Behave yourself!”
May 16, 2022, 1:19 p.m
In 2008, fans of Glasgow Rangers in Manchester caused serious riots, 50 years ago a pitch attack brought the club a two-year European Cup ban. The memory is still fresh ahead of Wednesday’s Europa League final.
Glasgow Rangers, 55-time Scottish champions and European Cup winners in 1972, are facing the biggest game in their club’s recent history: they are playing against Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday (9 p.m./live on RTL and on RTL+ as well as in the live ticker on ntv.de) Europa League final in Seville. The final is a sensation, the anticipation is huge in both camps, the fans of both teams moved huge crowds on their away tours through the competition and also created a great atmosphere on the way. But there are also concerns on the island. The club has a club legend make an urgent appeal to its own fans: “Behave yourself,” says Graeme Souness.
“This is a message for everyone who is going to Seville,” said Souness, who worked for Glasgow Rangers as a coach and player and won five league titles and five League Cups with the club. “Go there, enjoy it, have a great time. Our team did incredibly well to get there. Considering the path we’ve come in the last ten years to be in a real European final now, it’s a fantastic achievement,” but, says the 58-time Scotland international, “now it’s your turn. You have to go there and behave. Have a party, but behave! You’re going there as ambassadors for this great football club. Behave, otherwise we all have headlines that can hurt us for a long time.”
The background to the appeal to their own fans is less in the present of the club, whose appendix was instrumental in the semi-final triumph over the highly favored RB Leipzig, but in the past: 2008, when the Scots were in a European one for the last time When the final was over, Rangers fans caused riots, some of which were serious, especially after the UEFA Cup final against Zenit St. Petersburg. A Russian supporter was stabbed in the final venue of Manchester, and the BBC interrupted its regular program to report from Manchester.
Several Scots fans were arrested, and twelve were finally sentenced to prison terms of between six months and three and a half years for their involvement in the riots. The judge in charge described the hours after the game as “the worst night of violence and destruction that Manchester city center has seen since the Blitzkrieg”.
“Highly reprehensible”
The club was largely unaffected by the loss of the 2008 final in Manchester, with UEFA pointing out that “our disciplinary rules relate to incidents in and around the stadium” and “Rangers are of course fully cooperating with the authorities and banning all fans who are guilty of the riots,” announced then-UEFA general secretary David Taylor.
In 1972, the biggest triumph in the club’s long history had a bitter aftermath for the club: Rangers won the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup at Camp Nou 3-2 against Dynamo Moscow, but then had to sit out at European level. After Scottish fans stormed the pitch, UEFA banned the club from all European competitions for two years. Dynamo Moscow had protested the result, claiming the players had been intimidated by supporters. The title win endured, even if the UEFA Disciplinary Committee declared that what had happened was “highly reprehensible”.
Axel Hellmann, CEO of this year’s opponent in the final, Eintracht Frankfurt, expects “a rush that this city has never experienced before” in view of the two extremely keen fan scenes for Seville. As Hellmann explained to the “Frankfurter Rundschau”, up to 50,000 Frankfurt fans are expected – and “conservatively estimated” with 70,000 to 80,000 supporters from Glasgow. “They hijacked all the ferries from North Africa,” Hellmann praised the creativity of the Scots and recalled the Manchester night in 2008: “At that time there were 200,000 Scots in Manchester, they slept under bridges and on park benches.”
The board of Glasgow Rangers also has a formative memory of 2008. “We’re going to a beautiful city, Seville, go and enjoy the city, but let’s do it the right way,” said chief executive Stephen Robertson recently. “To all fans, ticketed or not, go and have fun, go and enjoy the opportunity. I remember thinking in 2008, ‘Will I see Rangers in a European final again?'”