Rangers get CL draw, possible run-in with Vlad

By: Ian Rose | June 29th, 2007

Well, it’s June 29th and that means the draw for the first qualifying round of the UEFA Cup and the first two qualifying rounds of the Champions League. Even with the Intertoto already having started, Europe doesn’t feel like it really starts until these draws come out. The teams can start preparing, starting researching their opponents and getting ready for that first meaningful match of the year.

In the case of Rangers, entering at the second round of CL qualifying, there’s an extra wrinkle, a reasonable chance at meeting Vlad Romanov’s Kaunas team from Lithuania, the unofficial feeder team for Hearts. In the past few years, Romanov, who owns controlling shares of both Kaunas and Hearts, has loaned several players between the two, filling Hearts’ roster with Lithuanian talent. This, along with his insane rants at the media, the referees, women, and basically everyone else, has made him few friends in the SPL, and has cost Hearts a number of promising Scottish players. He has made Hearts, a Scottish side filled with tradition and history, into the team everyone loves to hate, and loves even more to beat. Rangers will relish the opportunity to take one more bite out of one of Vlad’s teams, and since I fully expect Kaunas to beat Zeta from Montenegro in the first round, it looks like they’ll get their chance.

I wonder whose fault it will be when Kaunas loses to Rangers? The refs? The players’ wives? Romanov has had a quiet couple of months, and it’s been a while since we had a good rant out of him, so I for one am looking forward to it.

In all seriousness, though, Rangers saw what happened to Celtic a few years ago, with a promising Champions League season cut short in the same round. There is no UEFA Cup for second-round losers, only a trip home and European weekends off, and this team knows that they, and Scotland, deserve better than that.