Rangers 1-0 Red Star in the Champions League

By: Ian Rose | August 14th, 2007

Well, as I’ve said, this is a HUGE week for Scotland in European competition. As both Celtic and Rangers vie for the Scrooge McDuck-like room full of gold coins that is the Champions League group stage, Dunfermline begins its UEFA Cup campaign. The first to face the fire, however, was Rangers, and they faced a very tough Red Star Belgrade side, or at least a very aggressive one. Red Star earned seven yellow cards, and ducked what should have been an eighth. Surprisingly, given the physical nature of the game, and the surprising number of naughty English words the Serbians had in their vocabulary, there were no bookings for Rangers. Good thing, too, since five Rangers players entered the match sitting on a yellow themselves. It was Nacho Novo (”The New Nacho” if my Spanish serves me) who finally broke the stalemate and scored the match’s only goal in the 90th minute, after coming on to replace a disappointing DeMarcus Beasley. Run DMB just wasn’t on his game tonight, and was a pretty obvious choice for substitution. Novo and Daniel Cousin are proving to be super-subs for Rangers. My man-of-the-match, though, would have to go to Carlos Cuellar. I can’t say enough about his defending so far this season. He’s a huge part of the reason that Rangers haven’t conceded a single goal in their first five matches (2 league, 3 European), and I really didn’t expect the Spaniard to adjust to the Scottish game this quickly.

Next up is Celtic at Spartak Moscow tomorrow, for which JT has provided an excellent preview. Hopefully, they can be at least as successful as Rangers and we’ll see two Scottish teams in the group stages, something that hasn’t happened in four years.