Glasgow Rangers in the UEFA Champions League 2009-2010
Well the draw has been made for the 09 -10 UEFA Champions League group stages and Glasgow Rangers the Scottish Champions find themselves in Group G along with Sevilla of Spain, VfB Stuttgart of Germany and Unirea Urziceni of Romania. Now that their opponents are known what can be expected in the matches that are looming on the horizon for the Scottish Champions?
Last season saw Sevilla finish third in La Liga and play in the same UEFA cup group as Stuttgart enjoying a victory over the German team however they were still unable to qualify from the initial group. The transfer deadline day capture of striker Alvaro Negredo from Real Madrid was an astute piece of business for the Andalusian club leaving them with an array of striking talent including Luis Fabiano and Freddie Kanoute. An opening day league defeat at Valencia saw Sevilla get off to an uninspiring start however they will no doubt be a force to be reckoned with.
VfB Stuttgart finished third in the Bundesliga last season and made it to the last 32 of the UEFA Cup before losing out to Zenit St Petersburg. This will be the third time that the Bundesliga side will have faced Rangers in the Champions League group stages. In season 2003-04 and 2007-2008 each club enjoyed a home victory so will this season revert to previous form? With the summer captures of Pavel Pogrebnyak from Zenit St Petersburg and Alexander Hleb from Barcelona added to established stars like Yildiray Basturk and Thomas Hitzlsperger the team from the Mercedes-Benz Arena will present a formidable obstacle to overcome.
The final group members are Unirea Urziceni who won their first Romanian league title last season and were also runners up in the Romanian Super Cup. Managed by former Romanian international Dan Petrescu, Unirea are looking to push on from last season and have enjoyed relative success since gaining promotion to the top division in Romania three years ago. The current squad is made up mainly from ex Romanian internationals alongside players from Lithuania, Serbia, Portugal, South America and Guinea-Bissau. As the Tineretului stadium has a capacity of 7000 and does not meet UEFA requirements all Unirea home matches shall be played at the 27500 home of Steaua Bucharest. Whilst not wishing t underestimate Unirea it is difficult to imagine that they will finish anywhere other than bottom of the group.
So can Rangers finish in the top two of the group and qualify for the knock out stages of the Champions League? It is not beyond them to get perhaps seven points form the three home matches whilst on their travels they may not gather much from Germany or Spain but a win in Romanian is a distinct possibility. With a bit of luck they could then find that a second place finish is within their grasp and from there who knows, what is certain however is that with the first games coming up in the next 10 days we shall not have long to wait for an answer.
Written by on July 17th, 2010 with
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