Momentum and the night Rangers' European dream came sharply into focus - Martyn Ramsay

One quirk of modern football is that some teams can reach European finals without the consistent upwards trajectory of the traditional cup run, that building sense of excitement and destiny that grows from such an inauspicious start.

In the 20 seasons to date, where the UEFA Cup/Europa League has absorbed teams who were knocked out of the Champions League along the way, 19 teams have reached the final of one European tournament after having suffered the dejection of being eliminated from another. That figure includes eight winners. It’s not how the traditionalists demand that it should be.

It is exactly how it was for Rangers, however, in 2007/08. Champions League qualification was ground out in the intensity of Belgrade and a difficult group was the reward. If anyone thought that the win at home to Stuttgart was a surprise, in a rather chaotic opening match, they would have needed smelling salts after the 3-0 victory over Lyon in France. A goalless draw at home to Messi, Ronaldinho et al left Rangers top of the group at the halfway stage. As this new-found momentum grew, so did the expectation, and Rangers found themselves frozen to the spot. No further points were picked up in the final three games and a place in the last-32 of the UEFA Cup was the consolation.

Perhaps if the results had been flipped and Rangers had managed to salvage the continuation of European football that season with an exhilarating surge and victory at home to Lyon, the mood over the winter would have been better. Many fans raged on internet forums and made it clear that they weren’t interested in the UEFA Cup, only a place at the very top table would do. More than a few responded that they would happily take their UEFA Cup Final ticket in that case, as surely they wouldn’t be interested in going to such a second-rate affair.

Much laughter was shared, some gallows humour possibly, but there was many a true word spoken in jest. By April of 2008, the possibility of needing tickets for the final was becoming a reality.

There had been another swing in momentum, accelerated by an Allan McGregor save from Boubacar Sanogo late on in the siege of Bremen. It was Nacho Novo who had actually started it with his late equaliser in Greece, as Panathinaikos were eliminated following a drab home 0-0 draw in the first leg of the round of 32 and a pretty insipid display in the second, in keeping with the general glum feeling that had bled out from that Lyon defeat. Then came victory in a raucous home leg to Werder Bremen, lying second in the Bundesliga at the time, when Rangers won 2-0 by virtue of some courageous forward play and a disastrous goalkeeping display by Tim Wiese.

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On a night of some literal thrills and spills, Daniel Cousin and Steven Davis were the beneficiaries as they speculatively and opportunistically created a cushion to take to Germany, where McGregor gave a masterclass in shot-stopping. The Brazilian Diego would breach his lines in the second half with a glorious 20-yard shot but stops against Markus Rosenberg and Daniel Jensen paled in comparison to the late miracle that denied Sanogo inside the six-yard box.

All of a sudden the magical, intangible force that is sporting momentum was gaining a rapid pace. There is a point in every unexpected cup run, sometimes a season as a whole, where the dynamic changes from an ‘enjoy-it-while-it-lasts’ whimsy to a ‘holy-shit-we-are-going-to-actually-do-this’ conviction. For Rangers in this season, that came in Lisbon.

For those who had travelled throughout the season, missing out on the next chapter was becoming impossible. The problem with this tie was that it took place in the middle of the Easter holidays and many had booked a spring break with the family long before it became apparent that Rangers might still be in Europe.

I know of one fan who was long booked on a Mediterranean holiday where there was no household negotiation being entered into for a quick alteration. On that Thursday morning he quietly slipped away from his wife and kids at the hotel to get a newspaper, somehow ended up at the airport and booked a flight to Lisbon. Listen, who knows how these things happen? “I’ll be back tomorrow,” was the gist of the, presumably short, phone call. Something special was brewing and this game simply couldn’t be missed.

For the rest who had prior consent for the trip, all the Rangers tickets had been paid for by the club as a thank you for an extended run of continental support. It would probably be the last hurrah after all.

It had started with a degree of familiarity in the home leg of the quarter-final where the concession of no away goals seemed to please the manager more than scoring any goals of his own may have. Another dull stalemate set up a trip to Portugal as thoughts turned to the victory over Sporting at the same stage of the successful European Cup Winners’ Cup campaign of 1971/72. These signs, completely irrelevant as they are, are given meaning by this surging force of destiny as coincidences became omens.

It was a sense that was manifest on all four possible fronts as Rangers roared into the spring with dreams of a quadruple still fully intact. There were inconvenient and avoidable replays in the Scottish Cup, which would prove costly in the end, but the league form was exactly the kind that stirs belief.

13 straight wins, including a 1-0 defeat of Celtic at Ibrox, left Rangers six points ahead with a game in hand as they entered the first weekend of April, with Lisbon soon to follow. On the face of it, the results of that weekend were yet further evidence of this unstoppable cruise to glory as Rangers extended their lead at the top.

The trick with momentum is that it is sometimes layered with hidden wobbles that won’t be felt until further in the future. This was a wobble and a missed opportunity that would come back to bite. Celtic lost at home to Motherwell on the Saturday, whilst Rangers had to come back three times to draw 3-3 with Dundee United at Tannadice the following day. Seven points with a game extra should have still been enough; however, nine may have deflated the counter charge by Celtic that was to come.

Walter Smith was forced into making just one change from the XI that started the first leg with Davie Weir’s suspension making room for Christian Dailly to come into the heart of the defence with Carlos Cuellar. Allan McGregor, Kirk Broadfoot and Sasa Papac made up the rest of that unit, whilst Brahim Hemdani, Steven Davis, Barry Ferguson, Kevin Thomson and Lee McCulloch comprised a tough midfield with Jean Claude Darcheville, on a dreadful individual European streak, was the lone man in attack.

The opening 15 minutes were an example of how different this Rangers side looked on the ball when away from home and with the pressure off. There was a composure about how they passed and there were some good moves that just fell foul of the offside flag. It was Sporting who went closest, though, as McGregor was rooted to the spot when Liedson’s header crashed back off the post following a wicked free-kick from Leandro. As the weather resembled Glasgow more than Lisbon, Darcheville’s intelligent runs and Ferguson and McCulloch represented the only threats to goal, but Sporting were reasonably contained too, only the brilliant Joao Moutinho scraping the post from outside the box.

Sporting, under some pressure from their own support, started the second half with far more intent, in doing so pushing the Rangers line further and further back. Within 10 minutes of the restart, there were three scares.

Firstly, Gladstone was inches away from converting a cross ball, Thomson (who picked up a costly booking that would rule him out of the first leg of the semi-final) precipitated a collective seizure amongst the support with a poor back-pass that put McGrgeor under serious pressure, and finally, a Simon Vukcevic header that glanced the woodwork. Rangers were leading a charmed life but Sporting were playing further and further into a pattern that suited this team down to the ground.

On the hour mark, the trap was sprung. With Sporting forcing the issue more and more, Broadfoot released the pressure with a hopeful punt up the field. The bounce of the ball beat the two closest Sporting players, Darcheville gave Davis a cushioned header and the break was on. With two more touches of the ball, Rangers were incredibly ahead. Davis was able to cut the ball back into the box before Leandro could reach him and Darcheville, with the horror of that miss against Lyon still hanging over him, was in plenty of space to score one of the most crucial goals of the whole season with a classy left-foot finish past Rui Patricio.

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With Sporting needing two goals, the tone was set for the remaining half an hour but, with the exception of McGregor’s goal frame being clipped once more, this time from a Yannick Djalo snapshot, it was mostly a case of impotent possession against numbers and close pressing around the Rangers box.

Smith replaced one target man with another as Daniel Cousin took on that role whilst he took the seemingly defensive move of replacing McCulloch with another defender in Steven Whittaker. The only disappointment as Rangers ran down the clock was the yellow card shown to Ferguson, meaning that, if the job in the Estadio José Alvalade was completed, they would line up in a UEFA Cup semi-final without two key players in midfield.

With two minutes of normal time left, Cousin should have been the one that sealed a famous victory, but he let the ball roll too far away from him, after another brilliant driving run by Davis, and could only find the side netting. Given the away goal and the ever-decreasing time available, by the time Whittaker dispossessed Abel inside the Rangers half none of the travelling support should have had any remaining concerns.

This is Rangers, however, so when Cousin’s run made space past Leandro it was no wonder the supporters, to a man and woman, were screaming “PASS!” Miguel Veloso clearly thought that would be the most obvious move and so didn’t commit to closing down the slaloming Whittaker, thus leaving him the space to complete the best moment of his career when he cooly steered it into the bottom corner.

Steven Whittaker slots the ball past the despairing Rui Patricio to score Rangers' second goal in their 2-0 win over Sporting Lisbon in 2008.

The esteem in which he is held by the Rangers support would plummet rapidly in later years, but at that moment he was a hero. Rangers were in a semi-final of a European competition with a classic counter-attacking performance and two of the greatest goals in the club’s history.

In purely footballing terms, this game doesn’t quite exceed the achievement in Eindhoven in 1978 or even the draw with Marseille in 1993. Sporting won the Portuguese Cup that season but hadn’t been league champions since 2002 (and are still waiting at the time of writing). It ranked 28th in the 50 Greatest Rangers Games, however, because of the devastating nature of the two goals and because at this moment, frozen in time, it all looked on for Rangers.

Fiorentina stood in the way of a UEFA Cup Final, a very difficult opponent but still beatable, especially as it was, for the fourth tie in a row, a case of having the home leg first. One domestic trophy was in the bag and, given Celtic’s exit from the Scottish Cup the month before, the path was clear in the other. And surely, given such a big lead in the championship, a domestic treble was the least that Rangers would manage.

“I don’t believe in momentum.

“Momentum changes with one hanging curveball,” said Bob Boone, the former Major League Baseball All-Star.

There were a few of those for Rangers to deal with in the closing weeks of the season. Thomson’s booking, which ruled him out the Old Firm double-header at Parkhead, McGregor’s injury in the first of those games, which probably would have prevented the 93rd minute Celtic winner and ended their chase there and then and of course Celtic’s ‘Tour of Japan’ rouse which meant that the season could not be extended and ensured that Rangers had to play 14 games in the final six weeks of the season. That momentum was now stuck in a sickly treacle.

Strictly speaking, both quotes by Mediate and Boone are contradictory nonsense. In two sentences, Boone states he doesn’t believe in momentum before then, explaining how it changes, and Mediate declares something unstoppable and then subsequently tells us three different things that can stop it.

They’re not knowingly wrong, like a carefully constructed Groucho Marx or Peter Altenberg aphorism (“There are only two things that can destroy a healthy man: love trouble, ambition and financial catastrophe. And that’s already three things, and there are a lot more.”) However, they still make some kind of sense to us. Momentum is a purely psychological phenomenon. Rangers felt unstoppable that night in the José Alvalade. It was going to be our big year.

However, metaphorical hanging curveballs do happen in sport. Suspensions and injuries mount up and the thought of a fixture pile-up can be mentally draining before the balls have even been kicked. It is the response to those curveballs that counts. These are the kind of situations where forced errors become unforced errors in tennis or two quick wickets leads to a batting collapse in cricket. A once unshakable belief can quickly turn into corrosive self-doubt.

As fans, we seem to be able to extricate the domestic season from the European one in 2007/08. There are countless Rangers games throughout history that were a snapshot of intense emotion and pride but are subsequently damaged by what immediately followed. Every element of that European run, however, in a time where Scottish football was at best a second-class citizen in continental society, still shines brightly. We are still very much in awe of those memories and the journey.

Thousands of bears slipped into the Lisbon night for an evening of celebration, dreaming of just one more bright European night. Three weeks later, they’d get their wish.