By Alistair Aird
Rangers take on Sturm Graz on Thursday evening and the tie will evoke memories of two contests between the sides 25 years ago. Rangers produced one of their finest ever Champions League performances when they thumped Sturm Graz 5-0 at Ibrox, but Sturm Graz would exact revenge when the sides met in Austria, winning 2-0. This is the story of those two matches.
Going into season 2000/01, Rangers were dominant. Under Dick Advocaat, who had succeeded the totemic Walter Smith in the summer of 1998, they had claimed five of the six major domestic trophies available and started to flex their muscles in Europe too, slugging it out against the likes of Bayern Munich and finding themselves unfortunate not to inflict a couple of defeats on the German giants.
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But things would unravel spectacularly in what was Advocaat’s third season in charge.
A player pool that was already festooned with foreign players with hefty price tags was deepened with the acquisitions of Bert Konterman and Fernando Ricksen. The combined fee was in the region of £8 million. But neither would add value to the squad in the short term as Rangers endured a rough start to the season.
After four straight league wins, the Light Blues were thrashed 6-2 at Parkhead in late August. Defensively, they were all at sea, with Ricksen and Konterman drowning on their Old Firm debuts. Two more points were dropped in game six too, a 1-1 draw against Dundee at Dens Park.
However, an unconvincing aggregate wins over Zalgiris Kaunas had been followed by a comprehensive thrashing of Herfolge to secure group stage football in the Champions League. And the first of the six matches in Group D would see Sturm Graz visit Glasgow and Ronald de Boer pull on a Rangers jersey for the first time. His acquisition and subsequent career at Ibrox will be analysed in a separate article.
De Boer was joined in the starting XI against Graz by his fellow countryman, Michael Mols. Mols had had a blistering start to his Rangers career aborted by a knee injury, and the Dens Park draw saw him complete his first full 90 minutes since he had sustained the injury in Munich in November 1999.
There would be a rare start too for Allan Johnston. Signed from Sunderland in the summer, Johnston had scored against Kaunas and Herfolge, but had barely featured in the league. Like de Boer and Mols, Johnston would play a central role on a memorable night under the lights in G51.
It took Rangers only nine minutes to break the deadlock. Johnston’s cross from the right found Albertz but his attempt looked to be drifting wide of goal. But de Boer had other ideas. He nipped in ahead of Gilbert Prilasnig and hooked the ball back into the penalty area. Mols met it and fired a shot into the net.
Johnston struck the post shortly afterwards before he arrowed in another right wing cross that had de Boer on the move. He evaded his marker, met the ball at the front post and after 19 minutes, Rangers were 2-0 ahead.
Rangers were rampaging forward at will and delivered a hammer blow after 29 minutes. Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s pass was weighted perfectly and Jorg Albertz thudded a trademark left foot drive across the goalkeeper into the far corner.
Mols blazed a volley over the bar before the break and the relentlessness continued after the restart. Johnston rattled the crossbar before Albertz spurned the chance to double his tally when he missed a penalty kick. De Boer danced into the area for the umpteenth time and was fouled, but the German, normally deadly from 12 yards, executed poorly and the goalkeeper made the save.
Mols was substituted after an hour and replaced by a man who would have his own stellar contribution to make late on in the game, Billy Dodds. The Dutchman had shown flashes of the form that had dazzled the fans following his signing from FC Utrecht, whetting the appetite that more game time would see him back at his best.
As for de Boer, he was still going strong, bobbing and weaving his way through the Sturm Graz defence and showcased his full repertoire of talents during a sumptuous display. He turned goalmaker after 70 minutes, jinking past a couple of challenges before laying the ball into the path of van Bronckhorst who lashed a left foot shot into the net.
Dodds, who had headed straight at the goalkeeper shortly after coming on, then applied the cherry on top of the icing on the cake when his delicious chip shot arced over the goalkeeper and nestled in the net.
The gubbing of Graz looked to have blown the early season cobwebs away. It was followed by three straight league wins and a magnificent 1-0 win against Monaco. Advocaat deployed Tugay as a sweeper in the French principality and the Turk was tremendous. A goal from van Bronckhorst secured the points and after two Group D matches, Rangers had maximum points.
But what followed was of cataclysmic proportions.
Galatasaray survived a late comeback to win 3-2 in Istanbul at the end of September. Rangers would defeat Dundee United comfortably at home the following weekend and eliminate United from the League Cup at the end of October too. But sandwiched in between was a woeful run. A 1-0 defeat at Easter Road was the first of three in succession in the league. The last of the trio was a 3-0 thumping at home to Kilmarnock. And the visit of Galatasaray to Ibrox ended in a 0-0 stalemate.
The decline was arrested somewhat by a 7-1 mauling of St Mirren. Kenny Miller scored five of the goals, and although the defeats in the league had been punished by Celtic to the extent that the title race was all but over, the victory had restored some of the battered confidence ahead of the trip to Austria to face Graz.
Sturm Graz had recovered their poise too. Admittedly, they had lost 5-0 in Monaco, but had scored five without reply in their two home games, defeating Galatasaray 3-0 and Monaco 2-0. They would therefore offer a much more sterner test than they had done on matchday one.
Stefan Klos, who had shut Graz out in Glasgow, missed the match in Austria through injury. Mark Brown had deputised in his absence, but 22-year-old Jesper Christiansen, who had made his debut in the 3-0 defeat against Kilmarnock, was given the gloves. There was a place on the bench too for the lesser spotted Marco Negri.
After an electrifying start to his Rangers career – 30 league goals in his first 20 league appearances – he had made only four appearances under Advocaat. Three of them were in friendly matches, with the fourth coming as a sub against Morton in the Scottish Cup in February 2000.
The Rangers XI showed four changes from the reverse fixture in Glasgow. Apart from the alteration in goal, Mols, Albertz and Johnston didn’t start in Graz. Their places were taken by Rod Wallace, Tugay and Andrei Kanchelskis.
Rangers had the better of a cagey opening to the match, but fell behind after 20 minutes thanks to a sucker punch on the counter attack. De Boer was robbed of possession and the ball found its way to Sergei Yuran who rounded Christiansen and rolled the ball into the net with his right foot.
The Rangers response saw van Bronckhorst and Kanchelskis test the home goalkeeper, and with Sturm Graz content to sit tight and defend their lead, Rangers enjoyed plenty of possession. But there was no end product although van Bronckhorst had the goalkeeper at full stretch to turn away his attempt at goal five minutes shy of the interval.
The second half followed a similar pattern of play, Rangers probing and Graz looking to punish on the break. But going into the closing stages still facing a one-goal deficit, Advocaat went for a radical switch, pitching in Negri in place of his fellow countryman, Sergio Porrini. It was to no avail.
With six minutes left, Arthur Numan was ordered off. The Spanish referee had booked the Dutch left back early in the match when he returned to the fray without permission following a spell of treatment. He was always walking a tightrope after that and when he was found guilty of obstructing an opponent, a second yellow was swiftly followed by a red. Salt would be poured into the wound when Gilbert Prilasnig secured the points when he scored with almost the last kick of the ball.
Remarkably, despite losing two away games by five goals to nil, Sturm Graz now topped Group D. A point in Turkey on matchday six cemented that position and Rangers should have joined them in the knockout stages. A win at home against Monaco would have been enough to ensure that was the case, but despite leading twice courtesy of goals from Miller and Mols, an error by Lorenzo Amoruso was punished by a second equalising goal. Rangers finished third and parachuted into the UEFA Cup where they were whacked 3-1 on aggregate by Kaiserslautern.
Punching above our weight and performing well in Europe is something Rangers have made a habit of in recent years. Ignoring the Champions League debacle in season 2022/23, Rangers have more than held their own on the Continent. Until this season of course. Despite decent performances at home against Panathinkaikos and Plzen, the 9-1 aggregate mauling at the hands of Club Brugge has created lacerations that still run deep. The meek 1-0 defeat at home against Genk last week coupled with domestic drudgery has simply exacerbated the problem.
In previous seasons, with their pedigree, Rangers would be confident of winning the game on Thursday. Champions of Austria last year, Sturm Graz have started this season with five wins and two defeats in the league. They sit in second place, two points behind leaders SK Rapid (Rapid Vienna). In Europe, their Champions League ambitions were thwarted by Bodo Glimt who won 5-0 in Norway before losing 2-1 in Austria. Matchday one in the Europa League saw Sturm Graz succumb to a 2-0 defeat against an FC Midtjylland that squeezed past Hibernian 3-2 on aggregate in the second qualifying round. They will follow the visit of Rangers with a trip to Parkhead before hosting Nottingham Forest.
But this is no ordinary season. The late win at Livingston on Sunday made it five wins out of 15 for Russell Martin. Will Thursday yield win number six? Given the current apathetic malaise and mediocrity that surrounds Rangers and their hapless Head Coach that seems unlikely at this moment in time.