RAMON SANCHEZ-PIZJUAN STADIUM – Aaron Ramsey has played in more big European nights than the rest of Rangers’ squad put together, but experience can mean everything or nothing at all when you’re facing the demons of a penalty shootout and the hopes of half a city and half a stadium fall onto your shoulders.
Rangers’ European dream ended with the last kick of the final. Ramsey, signed on loan amid much fanfare from Juventus, was brought on specifically for his reliability from 12 yards. Even the best laid plans can go awry.
Eintracht Frankfurt deserved their win. Rangers had the better of the second half of extra-time but the Germans were more dominant before then. They were also emphatic from the penalty spot with all five spot-kicks. Allan McGregor has pursued the dream finish to a playing career that might well end in Seville. He barely got into the same postcode as the ball was directed off posts and into top corners. Like the Rangers supporters behind the goal, he was helpless.
Rangers thought that they had done enough. They probably fell too deep towards their own goal, probably allowed one cross too many to come into the box and probably battled to win one 50-50 ball to many to survive. They had dreamed that Joe Aribo’s goal would be enough, pouncing on a sloppy backward header and piece of defensive misfortune to put half of Glasgow in dreamland.
More on Rangers FC
Aribo did his bit. He has played 65 matches for club and country this season, run himself into the ground in a number of different roles and never once given less than his all. The thigh surgery required by Alfredo Morelos turned Aribo into an emergency striker and by goodness he answered the call. When he chose to leave Charlton Athletic for Rangers in 2019, then-manager Lee Bowyer told him he was making a huge mistake. He respectfully disagrees.
Getting to extra-time was the least that Frankfurt deserved, on the balance of play. Frankfurt certainly started the brighter, egged on by the deafening monotone of their raucous supporters. They knitted neat one-twos, wingers roamed from their starting positions to sniff out danger like pigs seeking truffles and McGregor made a fine diving stop to deny Ansgar Knauff. McGregor missed Rangers’ 2008 Uefa Cup final with an ankle injury and became the oldest player in a European final. It is remarkable how long he has maintained his peak years.
But if Rangers were ruffled, they grew into the game. At times their play was a little too direct, a dichotomy between short passes across their defence and long, ranging passes down the channels or across the field. But occasionally it worked.
When Aribo drifted wide and created a two-one-on situation, Rangers aimed to feast on the second balls and win set pieces from which they could alarm Kevin Trapp. Frankfurt’s goalkeeper touched a John Lundstram header over the bar. Aribo curled wide from 20 yards after an advantage had been played.
In truth, real quality was at a premium. Finals tend to drift towards two ends of a spectrum: chaotic, thousand-miles-an-hour fairground fare with all the crashes and bangs of a hungover building site or nervous, tense matches in which neither team dares make a mistake and so risks little.
This was emphatically the latter, but can you blame them? Neither side dared to dream that they would ever be here but the finish line turns muscles to jelly and minds to mush. You can practise everything, replaying game scenarios ad infinitum; little of it helps.
Frankfurt were marginal favourites for good reason. Oliver Glasner, who took LASK and Wolfsburg into the Champions League before arriving in Hessen, has overseen a magnificent European campaign during which Eintracht remained unbeaten until the final.
If Rangers had their landmark away victory in Dortmund, their 3-2 win at the Camp Nou, ahead by three clear goals until injury time, was even more astounding. Eintracht spent £7m on new players last summer and have sold three big-money strikers (Andre Silva, Sebastien Haller and Luka Jovic in as many seasons). Glasner merits being linked with a similar trajectory.
And to their credit, they did not panic after falling behind. Their supporters may have been temporarily silenced by the thrashing mass of screaming Rangers supporters who celebrated their goal as if it marked the zenith of their own existence, but Glasner calmed his players down and stressed to them that they had plenty enough to make a difference.
More from Football
For all the British-centric focus on Rangers’ magical European journey, Frankfurt’s rivalled it. They were perfectly matched opponents in a final high on angst and tension, if slightly low on quality. Eintracht kept their nerve in impossibly tough circumstances and a Champions League group stage place is their reward.
For Rangers, defeat will feel like it is everything for days to come. But soon it should drift into nothing, replaced by the pride in where Giovanni van Bronckhorst has taken them emotionally and geographically. The emergency stop will leave them bruised but bruises fade. They have had the ride of their lives.
from Football | News and analysis from the Premier League and beyond | iNews https://ift.tt/QwbH7Nv
Post a Comment