Rangers – UEFA Cup final (2008-05-16)

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Rangers v Zenit St Petersburg in the UEFA cup final in Manchester 14th May 2008. Sadly the Huns embarassed themselves on and off the pitch, losing two nil and then a huge horde created havoc and riots that was plastered all over the papers down south and sadly looked over in Scotland! (Scotland's shame!!!!)

Rangers - UEFA Cup final (2008-05-16) - Kerrydale Street

Manchester Evening news
Call to Ban Rangers From Europe

RANGERS should be banned from European football next year, an MP says.

Graham Stringer, MP for Manchester Blackley, said the behaviour of the rioters was `unacceptable'.

He said: "Uefa will have to look at whether Rangers are allowed in next year's European competition. These scenes are not acceptable, and neither is the damage to individuals and property.

"Unfortunately, the only way of doing something is punishing the club."

Gordon Brown claimed the behaviour of some Rangers fans had been a disgrace.

He said he intended to review public drinking laws after the ugly clashes.

He said: "It was a minority, but it was completely unacceptable for that to happen in a public place, where the Manchester authorities had made available the facilities for people to enjoy the match.

"We do have laws that enable us to control drinking in public places where there is a risk of disorder, and we will have to look at these laws for the future."

UEFA has ordered an inquiry into the rioting.

(2)Mirror

RANGERS should be banned from European competitions following their cup final shame, an MP said yesterday.

Graham Stringer, Labour member for Manchester Blackley, said: "I think a ban would be appropriate. Although it might seem unfair on the club, a message has to be sent out to fans that, if they cannot behave themselves, the club they support will be punished.

"This is needed to prevent events like this happening again."

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If Peace's novel can be described as an epic, Wednesday's Uefa Cup final (ITV 1), cannot. Except, sorry, it can if you're the match commentator, Peter Drury.

There have been more boring European finals – remember with a shiver the 1986 European Cup final, when Steaua Bucharest stifled El Tel's Barcelona and nicked it on pens – but not many. Which was Rangers' intention on Wednesday: cut out of the game everything remotely entertaining and hope for the luck of the penalty gods. But Drury begged to differ.

"To be here is extraordinary," he said as the game finally, mercifully, picked up for a few final minutes. "If Rangers do go down, that should not be forgotten. It has been a privilege. Their hope, their final thrust. Two and a half minutes to find the goal to force extra time, to prolong the epic – and what an epic it has been."

I guess he was probably thinking of the whole campaign of 19 games (with five goals in the last nine). But from my armchair they deserved to lose. I'm glad I missed the other 18. Zenit created, Rangers spoilt. The footballing side won. Cloughie would have approved.

The Independent

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The Times
A club with a poison at its core;Football;Opinion
Utterly predictably, the fate of Rangers is once again to find excitement on the field marred by loutishness and delinquency off it. Losing the Uefa Cup final in Manchester on Wednesday night was no disgrace for Walter Smith or his team, whose very presence at the game was a triumph in itself. Beyond the stadium, however, before and after the match, events told their own story of how accursed Rangers remain as a club.

Willie Waddell, a memorable Rangers manager of the early 1970s, whose team brought the 1972 European Cup Winners' Cup back to Glasgow, once aimed the following simmering words in the direction of his club's supporters: "It is to these tikes, hooligans, louts and drunkards that I pinpoint my message. It is because of your gutter-rat behaviour that we are being publicly tarred and feathered like this."
After that European triumph of 36 years ago, Rangers were banned by Uefa for the rioting of their fans, causing Waddell to implode with rage. The blight of Rangers – defined by loutish behaviour and bigoted chanting among groups of supporters – is proving a durable social poison. Here we are four decades on, still lamenting the seemingly endemic way in which these supporters behave like primitives.

The chaotic scenes in Manchester on Wednesday night – a Zenit fan stabbed, rioting Rangers fans, and 15 policemen getting injured – were frightening to behold. Moreover, the footage released yesterday and shown on Sky News, of hundreds of Rangers fans charging at police and setting upon one who stumbled to the ground, will make the already weary Ibrox hierarchy cringe.

Rangers have a repeated get-out for these episodes: the script always says this is "just a small minority" of fans. Moreover, as incident upon incident passes with the club's supporters – at Villarreal in 2006, in Pamplona in 2007 and now in Manchester in 2008 – it is always "heavy-handed policing" and not the Rangers fans themselves who are said to be the blame.

Well, this is no small minority of Rangers supporters, and nor are the Greater Manchester Police renowned for their truncheon- wielding brutality. Instead, this is a football club with a poison somewhere at its core.

Such scenes will enrage those legions of decent Rangers supporters who love their club and follow it with impressive ardour. The post-match eruptions were all the more depressing on Wednesday because the vast Rangers support gathered inside the City of Manchester Stadium had created a brilliant spectacle of colour and noise, including many who stayed on to applaud the Zenit St Petersburg players on their 2-0 triumph.

Other aspects, however, were familiarly ugly. During the day before the match, and certainly in the drunken aftermath, there was too much evidence of the sort of primitivism that enraged Waddell 36 years ago. In particular, bigoted or sectarian chanting remains an excruciating pastime for too many Rangers supporters, despite repeated pleas by the club to give these anthems a rest. For two days in Manchester, if you were based in the city centre as I was, you woke up to these dirges in the morning and you went to sleep to them at night.

Since being punished by Uefa two years ago for such antics by their supporters, Rangers have hired PR people, as well as Kenny Scott, a seasoned and former high-ranking Glasgow policeman, to try to gouge out the social disease which has clamped itself to the club.

Scott, in particular, knew very well the inherent dangers of 100,000 Rangers fans descending upon Manchester for the Uefa Cup final. The downside of Rangers reaching such a prestigious game in as close an area as the north of England was that it was an open invitation for the club's less impressive followers to display their capacity for drinking, aggression, and sectarian abuse. I would go so far as to say that Scott, as head of security at Rangers, will have been cringeing at the very prospect from the moment the club qualified for the final.

Some spoke yesterday of another Uefa investigation of Rangers, but this surely won't occur. It is almost impossible for Uefa, however much they care about the image of football, to weigh in on such affairs as public disorder in the city centres of Britain.

But who has the answer to this blight? Can anyone offer Rangers a cure for this ugly delinquency which afflicts a sizeable group of their supporters?
Until that cure is found, the once-proud name of Rangers FC will always trigger thoughts of yobbishness and bigotry. The club, to be blunt, is paying a heavy price for its century-long antipathy towards signing Catholic players, a policy which planted this bitter harvest.

Carnival day ends in violence News, pages 6-7
© Times Newspapers Ltd, 2008
© 2008 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
The Times
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The Times

Fans were like 'pack of wild wolves';Rangers riot

* Lone officer chased and beaten by mob

* Response to riot was 'measured', say police

A mob of Rangers fans who pursued a lone police officer before stamping on his head were described as a "pack of wild wolves" by a senior policewoman yesterday.

Officers were so sickened by the episode, which symbolised the brutality of the "Battle of Piccadilly", where fans clashed with riot police into the early hours, that they released the CCTV footage to justify their "measured" response.

The images show the officer, one of seven, retreating before a much larger number of pursuers along a street in Manchester city centre at around 10.15pm on Wednesday night. He is seen being punched and tripped and falling to the ground.

Then around 20 attackers kick and stamp on the officer's head before he makes a run for it, leaving the fans holding their arms aloft as if in triumph. The officer escaped with only a broken arm but could have been seriously harmed.

Assistant Chief Constable Justine Curran, the match commander, said: "The people in that CCTV footage acted like a pack of wolves. Whatever happened earlier there was no excuse for this level of violence. We had to act decisively."

It had been billed as a carnival of football in the sun, a chance for Scotland's football fans to show how far they have come from the bad old days in a city which has long experience of playing host to big sporting occasions. And, for much of the day, it lived up to expectations.

The authorities appeared to have been taken by surprise by the sheer numbers of ticketless Rangers fans who descended on Manchester. They had been expecting around 50,000, but the real figure was estimated to be between 100,000 and 150,000.

It was, said Sir Richard Leese, the council leader, the largest invasion of its kind that the city had ever experienced. Sir Richard blamed a hardcore of several hundred fans for the violence that erupted after the giant screen in Piccadilly Gardens went blank. Sporadic violence and running battles between fans and police spilled over into nearby streets late into the night.

One Russian fan was stabbed in the stadium but his injuries were not thought to be life-threatening. There were 42 arrests, including five for wounding with intent or suspicion of stabbing, and 15 police officers were treated for injuries.

Commuters arrived yesterday morning to find the city awash with pools of urine and buried under more than 100 tonnes of beer bottles, cans and other rubbish. Piccadilly Gardens, one of the city's few green spaces, looked like a battleground.

Meanwhile, thousands of bruised and hungover fans, some still clutching cans of lager, began the long journey home, leaving Manchester to begin the inquest into how the Uefa Cup Final carnival went so horribly wrong.

Many fans complained about the lack of organisation, the technical failure of the large screen and the police's heavy-handed response. One said: "The police were well out of order. A young girl of ten years old was hit. That's just sick."

The allegations were rebutted by Sir Richard, who described the night's events as shaming for Manchester, Glasgow and Rangers Football Club.

Many of the fans had been drinking alcohol since breakfast time, replenishing stocks from off-licences. By the time the large screen in Piccadilly Gardens went blank, they appeared too drunk to follow the advice to climb aboard the shuttle buses for the Velodrome, where a fourth screen had been hastily set up.

Sir Richard said: "Despite that a couple of hundred so-called fans – we will call them yobs – stayed in the city centre. They began causing trouble, assaulting and kicking police officers. Clearly the police then had to clear that trouble.

"We are obviously very disappointed that what was a great night was soured by the behaviour of a very small number of people. Over the last ten years we have held a number of sporting events in the city and we plan to hold many more.

"We are not going to let the behaviour of a very small number of people stop us from this."

Asked why so many fans were allowed to swig from bottles and cans in the city's streets and parks, Sir Richard said: "It would have been impossible to stop 100,000 Glasgow Rangers fans from drinking. This is something that has never happened in the city before and is extremely unlikely to ever happen again."

Ms Curran defended the police reaction as "measured". She said that she had been in the control room and had watched the mob chase her officers on monitors. "We had to do something. It was challenging and we were stretched. Our officers did come under a degree of violent attacks.

"I am happy we responded appropriately. We could not let those minor disturbances affect the day for everybody," she said.

The Times

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Riots knock 2018 World Cup hopes FA act quickly but Rangers unlikely to face sanctions after day of violence, writes Ewing Grahame

THE Government and the Football Association will embark on a damage limitation exercise to protect England's 2018 World Cup bid following rioting by Rangers fans in Manchester.

CCTV footage of Rangers fans attacking police and laying waste to the city centre was seen around the world after a day of mayhem.

Rangers are unlikely to be penalised for the misbehaviour of their fans during Wednesday's Uefa Cup final defeat by Zenit St Petersburg. However, the Government, who are leading a pounds 15 million bid by the FA for the 2018 World Cup, moved quickly to assure Fifa that England is a safe venue.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "I want to do everything to avoid us being put in a position where we might be at risk of an application for the 2018 World Cup not being acceptable because of this.''

Hundreds of ticketless supporters rioted in the city as a giant screen in Piccadilly Gardens, which had been due to provide live coverage to 10,000 people, failed to work. There were violent clashes with riot police, who were pelted with bottles and cans. Officers were assaulted in other parts of the city, where shops had been looted and cars overturned. In all, 15 policemen were injured.

Other emergency services came under attack from the thugs and by 9.30pm ambulance crews were no longer being sent into the city centre without a guarantee that they would receive a police escort.

Six men were arrested in connection with the stabbing of a Russian supporter, with a total of 42 arrests made on Wednesday.

Sir Richard Leese, the leader of Manchester City Council, claimed yesterday that many supporters had simply been too intoxicated to follow directions to an alternative screen which was set up after the breakdown of the Piccadilly Gardens screen.

"The technicians trying to repair the screen had bottles and stuff thrown at them so they had to withdraw,'' he said. "I think there were a fair number of fans that had been drinking since before breakfast time and they might have had some difficulty following instructions, but the majority were still capable.''

However, a Uefa spokesman revealed that they could not take sanctions against Rangers because the trouble happened away from the City of Manchester Stadium.

Rangers' chief executive, Martin Bain, said: "We are disappointed that a small minority soured what was a great carnival atmosphere and this is a view shared by our fans who travelled in unprecedented numbers.''

The Daily Telegraph

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Booze-Fuelled Savagery; guardian.co.uk's tea-time take on the world of football

FEEBLE O'RANGERS FANS' EXCUSES No529: THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN QUEEN'S CELTIC FANS IN DISGUISE

When the Fiver sat down to watch The Apprentice with some friends last night, pressed the button on its TV remote control and nothing happened, things got predictably ugly. As our houseboy tried to plug in the telly, we pelted him and the screen with empty beer bottles, then set about thrashing the vomit-drenched living room, leaving it full of broken furniture, smashed glass, crumpled beer cans and a bruised and bleeding policeman out of whom we'd kicked 17 bells. It was a typically uneventful Wedneday night in.

By sheer coincidence, similar scenes were unfolding elsewhere in the country at the same time and today it was announced that a full inquiry has been launched to try and figure out what on earth might have prompted HUNDREDS OF KNUCKLEHEADED POPE'S O'RANGERS FAN'S WHO'D SPENT ALL DAY YESTERDAY DRINKING to run amok in terrifying scenes of booze-fuelled savagery not witnessed in Manchester city centre since closing time last Saturday night.

While the Pope's O'Rangers footballers may not have risked going on the attack last night, their supporters more than made up for them. The outcome? One stabbing, 42 arrests and the brutal beating of a lone policeman by a gang of at least 30 brave O'Rangers fans (another copper was hit so hard his electronic earpiece had to be removed from his head by doctors, while a third had several teeth knocked out by a Glasgow kiss). "A minority of thugs have overshadowed what should have been a great occasion," said assistant chief constable Justine Curran of Greater Manchester police, who wasn't talking about the four centre-halves Walter Smith played across the back.

Although prime minister Gordon Brown was among those who echoed her sentiments, one man who was neither "sickened" nor "disappointed" was Uefa mouthpiece William Gaillard. "I can't believe that any other city would have done anything better," he whooped. Here's hoping Moscow's baton-happy riot police aren't given any reasons to set him straight next week.

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Zenit fan gets knife wound in Manchester, 6 Rangers fans arrested.

LONDON, May 15 (Itar-Tass) — One of fans of Russia’s Zenit football club (St. Petersburg) got a knife wound on Wednesday evening near the City of Manchester Stadium where the UEFA Cup final match was held, Manchester police reported on Thursday without specifying when the incident happened – before or after the match. The policemen stressed, however, that the knife wounds are not serious and the life of the Russian is not in jeopardy.

The law enforces qualified this incident as “a serious assault” and arrested six persons that are, to all appearances, the fans of the Glasgow Rangers club of Scotland, the Press Association news agency reported.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: “Six Rangers supporters were arrested at the stadium after a Russian fan was stabbed in the back prior to kick-off. His injuries are not life-threatening.”

According to an AFP news agency report, in a different part of the city in northwest England, 30 people were arrested after Rangers fans clashed with riot police while their team was losing 2-0 to the Russian club.

The angry scenes came after a giant TV screen set up to show the match in Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester failed to work, outraging thousands of fans who did not have tickets for the stadium.

Fans spilled out into the streets and the mood became tense when disgruntled supporters were unable to watch the game, the agency said.

A police spokesman said a small number of supporters who had been largely well-behaved started to pelt the screen with beer bottles.

A “significant minority” of fans then began to confront officers and throw bottles.

“A number of people were arrested during the disorder at Piccadilly. A number of people, including police officers, were injured as officers brought the disorder under control,” the police spokesman said.

Police said the majority of the estimated 100,000 fans who had travelled to Manchester had behaved impeccably, according to AFP.

Rangers were bidding to become the first Scottish team to win a European trophy for 25 years, but Zenit triumphed with two second-half goals to become the second Russian winner of the trophy in four years.

Most of the Zenit fans – there were 9,000 of them at the match – are expected to fly from Manchester to St. Petersburg in the next few hours.

-0-ezh/ast

ITAR-TASS World Service

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Ordeal Of PC Stamped On By Footie Mob Updated:12:54, Friday May 16, 2008

A policeman has told Sky News how he was kicked and stamped on by a mob of Rangers fans after the Uefa Cup Final.

PC Regan recovering from injuries CCTV pictures released by police show PC Mick Regan being battered on the ground in Manchester city centre on Wednesday night. "Initially, I went to help one of my colleagues as he was getting attacked," PC Regan said. "While I was doing that, there was another lad with a bottle. He threw it at me and hit me on the left elbow. "I started to withdraw then. The next thing I knew I was on the floor."

The trouble started when a big screen due to broadcast Rangers' match against Russian side Zenit St Petersburg to 20,000 fans in Piccadilly Gardens broke down just before kick-off. The 47-year-old described how a gang of about 20 fans kicked and stamped on him. "(I thought) These people really want to hurt me, they are really seriously going to try to injure me here, so I've got to get off the floor." CCTV was released of the violence The officer managed to get up off the ground and ran away from the crowd when he came across two more Rangers fans. "One of them shouted at me saying 'I'm British Army, I'm a medic'. He grabbed me by the collar and he propelled me up the street. "Then one of our vans came round the corner. He threw me in the back of it and off he went. Thank God."
PC Regan suffered bruising to both arms, sore ribs and a puncture wound to the elbow. Fifteen officers were injured during the violence.
Eleven Rangers fans, all men, have been charged with various offences

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A carnival day that descended into night of drunken mayhem;Rangers riot;Fa ctbox

They came in their thousands to party in the sun. But as the alcohol flowed, tempers snapped and Manchester erupted in violence

It had all seemed so peaceful at the start, with Rangers fans enjoying the sun before one of the most important games in their club's history.

The day began with a carnival atmosphere. A sea of blue-clad fans sang and danced as they counted down the hours to the game. Then, at 7.30pm, 15 minutes before kick-off, as anticipation mounted, the screen in the fan zone at Piccadilly Gardens – where up to 20,000 supporters had gathered – went blank.

The fans, most of whom had been drinking all day, reacted with fury. After throwing bottles at the screen – and allegedly at the technicians trying to fix the problem – they spilled out on to the streets. Hundreds of police, including mounted officers and dog units, moved in to control the crowd but were also showered with glass bottles and cans.

By 8.30pm there was mayhem in the area surrounding Piccadilly Gardens. Fans and police clashed in pitched battles as lines of riot officers charged the mobs.

By 10pm more riot police had arrived in armoured vehicles as terrified fans and families, who only a few hours earlier had been enjoying the festival feel of the day, fled in terror. In the end, so too did some police, after being vastly outnumbered by supporters.

The question being asked yesterday after the violent scenes were shown on television was: where did it all go wrong? Was it down to a vicious minority of brutal thugs, or was it a disaster waiting to happen at a badly organised event?

Some fans arriving back in Glasgow from Manchester yesterday blamed overcrowding and overzealous policing; the police accused some Rangers fans of behaving no better than animals.

The truth, as ever, is probably somewhere inbetween. It had been obvious from early in the day that the city was not as well prepared as it should have been for the arrival of 150,000 fans.

At 9am, ticketless supporters who had travelled through the night headed straight for the three fan zones to claim a place. Within an hour of opening, Piccadilly Gardens, the nearest area to the train station, and close to the city's hotels, restaurants and pubs, was almost full. It was an ominous start. Fans had ten hours in the baking sunshine with nothing to do but drink.

Most just wanted a good time. Hazel Macleod, 28, from Glasgow, who drove through the night to reach Manchester at 6am, was among the crowd who entered Piccadilly Gardens as soon as it opened. "We came in to pick up some programmes and couldn't believe it was already jumping," she said.

Ally Clark, 19, from East Kilbride, had also arrived early. "We don't have tickets so we wanted to make sure we could see our heroes on the big screen," he said.

Fans who had painted their faces, or donned wigs and hats, created a festival feel. Families attending the event said that they felt safe – a mood that was not to last.

By midday the party was in full swing, yet portents of the chaos to come were beginning to emerge. The amount of drink being consumed was the first and most obvious sign. Many fans were carrying cases of lager, and it was no surprise that many off-licences ran out of alcohol, with hundreds of supporters queueing outside supermarkets to snap up the remaining supplies.

Another problem was caused by the volume of people entering and leaving the fan zones simultaneously, because the mobile toilets were located outside. Glass was banned from the areas, but security staff were overwhelmed by the numbers and struggled to check every bag. All over Piccadilly Gardens, bottles of Buckfast peeped out of carrier bags.

As more supporters poured into the arena, and another busy enclosure at Albert Square, city officials realised that they had a potential public safety problem on their hands.

Shortly before 1pm a message flashed on the screens instructing fans to move to an almost empty fan zone which had opened earlier at Cathedral Gardens. There, with a capacity of 5,000 and stalls selling food, it was a more refined affair. But for the supporters who followed instructions and left Piccadilly Gardens, the subdued mood served only to highlight the mayhem across the rest of the city.

David Smith, 45, from Falkirk, said that he was disappointed by what he described as poor management of the event. "I think Manchester has been overwhelmed," he said. "They weren't prepared for this."

By mid-afternoon, as the heat and the drunkenness intensified, the mood became more boisterous and edgy. The sectarian songs, which earlier had been confined to a few isolated groups, began to be sung by tens of thousands of fans, their inhibitions washed away by alcohol. In Scotland they could have been arrested for committing a religious-aggravated offence, but in England there are no such laws and by that time the supporters didn't care. Even if the police had possessed the relevant powers it is doubtful they would have been able to exercise them.

When city officials look back on the events that led to Manchester becoming a battle zone on Wednesday night, they will find that the clues were apparent from early on.

Alcohol, passion and no small amount of machismo is a potent combination. Mix it with confusion and a lack of information and infrastructure, and disaster can quickly loom. Only hindsight will suggest how it could have been prevented.

Magnus Linklater Holyrood Sketch, page 16

Match statistics

150,000

estimated number of Rangers fans in Manchester

arrests

stabbing

police injured

victims of assault

100

tonnes of rubbish to be cleared from the city's streets by 250 staff

The Times

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No hiding place for the guilty

18 May 2008

By Tom English

(Scotland on Sunday)

Playing the blame game is not going to rescue Rangers' reputation after carnage in Manchester

JUST WHEN they thought we'd seen it all, some new footage of the Manchester riot emerges to sink Rangers ever deeper in shame. Another attack on a police officer, as shown by BBC Scotland on Friday evening. Another PC trapped on the ground and beaten and kicked by another baying mob and for good measure a little audio that picks up chants of "U-V-F, U-V-F" from a band of thugs marching through the city streets. A brutal assault on a policeman and a celebration of a loyalist terror group. Around the world that video went and further into the gutter went Rangers' reputation. Parts of it were reminiscent of '72. The excuse-making for one. Self-pitying and grotesque, it had echoes of Barcelona 36 years ago. Initially, Willie Waddell reacted thus to the rioting of the Rangers fans at the Nou Camp.

"The Rangers Football Club refuse absolutely to take any responsibility for what happened in that stadium. The game was organised by UEFA and crowd control was in their hands completely.

" It seems that Waddell's spirit of defiance lives on in an element of the Rangers supporters of today. The 2008 version goes like this…

"Manchester City Council have to take the majority of blame for this" – Gregor Moffat, Dunfermline. "I think the worst people there were the Rock Steady security guards" – Jason Stalker, Glasgow. "It was remarkable that almost none of the ringleaders wore club colours or spoke with a Scottish accent. There were, however, many English and Northern Irish accents" – the Daily Record.

"There was nowhere to eat and no toilets, which was asking for trouble" – Kenny Barr, Ayrshire.

"Now England faces losing the 2018 World Cup. Amid the accusations and recriminations in the wake of the Battle of Piccadilly, that is all the powers-that-be really care about. They do not care they could have had a disaster on their hands because the game was played at a venue that was too small, in a city that couldn't cope and run by authorities that were ill-prepared" – Daily Record editorial.

"I blame the bar owners. They saw an opportunity to cash in by selling us beer from early in the morning and it's backfired really badly" – anonymous fan.

"Shame on the organisers from Manchester – badly organised event and a poor show all round. If you allow 100,000 to drink and then sabotage the screen and not allow dedicated loyal fans to find other TV screens no wonder the frustrations of a minority lost the plot. Let's have some media balance" – Arlene, Swindon.

So many myths. So much hypocrisy. Last Saturday morning, Sir David Murray and Martin Bain invited the Sunday journalists to an upstairs office at Ibrox for a little pre-UEFA Cup briefing. He'd opened some bottles of red from his vineyard and encouraged us to have a taste. The mood was convivial. Murray, quite understandably, was hugely excited at the final to come.

Both he and Bain were asked about the size of the travelling support. Did they really and truly believe that it would be as many as 100,000 people? Both agreed that it probably would be. That's the number they had in mind; 100,000. It's the number Manchester City Council had in mind also because it was given to them by Rangers and by their counterparts in Glasgow and by Strathclyde Police. Yet the council in Manchester are castigated by some Rangers fans for not having plans in place for another 50,000 on top.

In the wake of the trouble in Manchester, there has been little focus at what went on at the beamback event at Ibrox. There was over-crowding there as well. Too many people turned up and the club struggled to cope. There was fighting and blood was spilled. There was too much drink. There was organisational chaos and arrests; 17 in and around the stadium, three times more than at the last Old Firm game. However, we have not heard Rangers people condemn the event as being "run by authorities that were ill-prepared".

So many assumptions, so little evidence. Bain, the Rangers chief executive, said that the worst of the scenes were caused by people who "don't normally attach themselves to our support". Where he is getting this from is unclear. How he can be so sure is also unclear. If he's getting it from the same source that the Daily Record got their line about "none of the ringleaders wore colours or spoke with a Scottish accent" then Bain is spectacularly off the mark. YouTube exposes the nonsense of the absent colours. They are everywhere. One of the main pursuers of PC Mick Regan is wearing a Rangers top. In other footage, Rangers fans can be seen fighting with other Rangers fans, can be seen goading the police, can be seen punching and kicking officers, can be seen lobbing bottles and cans and traffic cones and destroying cars.

People will believe what they want to believe, see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear. Some Rangers fans will always be of the view that the initial cause of the trouble was the big screen breaking down in Piccadilly Gardens. It's the ned's defence. Some would argue that hard drinking from 7am was what sparked it all, that had the big screen not broken down the drunken thugs would have found some other cause to fight, some other reason to go on their disgusting rampage. Is there a soul out there who believes that, after 12 hours on the beer, Wednesday night was going to end with the Rangers fans slipping away quietly to their beds?

On Friday, PC Regan spoke of the moment he was attacked. Already a legend is forming in places that it was a Rangers fan who rescued him, who picked him up and helped him get away from the angry mob. This is what PC Regan actually said: "One of them shouted at me saying 'I'm British Army, I'm a medic.' He grabbed me by the collar and he propelled me up the street. Then one of our vans came round the corner, he threw me in the back of it and off he went. Thank God. I feel lucky. Whoever that army lad was, he wants a medal." All Regan can remember was that he had an English accent. Maybe he was an Englishman who supports Rangers. And maybe those Englishmen that the Daily Record say they heard in the front line of battle were Rangers supporters too. Could be, couldn't it?

And it could also be the case that the officer's estimate of the number of troublemakers in the city was pretty accurate. The figure that has done the rounds since Wednesday was 200. PC Regan reckons it was closer to a thousand. He's been in the job for 23 years so maybe his opinion has a bit of substance to it. A thousand is still a small minority but it's more than enough to scare the living daylights out of experienced policemen who have been dealing with crowd disorder all their careers but who had never, ever seen anything like Wednesday before.

INSIDE THE stadium there was a different kind of mayhem. As the teams appeared a little before 7.45pm the atmosphere was electrifying, the Rangers support raucous at the sight of Barry Ferguson leading his men out. As is the custom these days, both sets of players were accompanied by young children holding the hands of the footballers as they made their way on to the field. The kid in Ferguson's care was terrified by the noise, almost stiff with fear. The Rangers captain picked him up and brought him in close. It was a lovely moment. In many ways, it was the best of it.

The scenes at the stadium were wonderful but the final itself was everything we thought it would be. A slow grind. A team of attacking class against a team happy to hang on in there and hope for a miracle. There was no shame in it. Rangers played to their strengths, but it didn't work this time. There's been some criticism about their negativity in the final, but what would positivity have brought? Not victory. Certainly not that. Against a side as quick and as skilful Zenit? Almost certainly a terrible defeat. These guys beat Bayern Munich 4-0 in their last competitive game. Bayern went to Russia to play expansively and got mugged. If they did that to the Germans, God alone knows what they would have done to Rangers. Two goals could easily have been four – or worse.

Zenit were excellent or as excellent as they could be when faced with the great spoilers of the UEFA Cup. Rangers have frustrated all-comers in this tournament but the Russians were a step above, in terms of precision and craft, anything Rangers had faced before. Some of the Ibrox men said later that they had faced better this season. Werder Bremen were mentioned. But Zenit didn't have the self-destructiveness of the Germans. They didn't have a calamitous goalkeeper or a set of strikers whose luck was out.

Ferguson was one of the Rangers men who thought that Bremen were superior to Zenit and it added to his frustration. "They're a good team," he said. "They took boys wide, played three up top but I'm not saying they battered us. They've won the cup and we congratulate them but we've beaten better. They won the game in the end and fair play to them, but I think we've played against better opposition."

The captain was resigned in the aftermath. "That's it over and done with now," he sighed. "It was a great achievement to get to the final but there's huge disappointment we didn't do it in the end. It's been a great experience, something I thought would never happen. It's been great for myself, my family, all my mates. Disappointing in the end I've got a runners-up medal. But you never know. I might get to another one. You never know."

The half-smile on Ferguson's face suggested that he does know. That was his chance, been and gone. Walter Smith's chance, too.

How will history remember the day, Smith was asked. "It depends on how people want to look upon it," he said. "You can't take away what happened, but a lot of good things happened prior to that. For the majority of the people there they'll remember the good things. A minority have caused embarrassment and that's the biggest shame because the vast majority went down for enjoyment."

Those people are as much victims as anybody else. They have been scarred by the dysfunctional yobs who attach themselves to this football club. The ones who perpetrated the violence and the many, many others who sought to explain it away by laying the blame on heavy-handed policing humiliated Rangers, Glasgow and Scotland as a whole on Wednesday. "These animals are not football supporters," said local man Matthew to the Manchester Evening News on Thursday. "They're louts and idiots who came here for one reason only, to get drunk and cause trouble. It's 9am now on the day after. I'm sat in my office at Piccadilly Gardens looking out on the carnage. What else can I see? Rangers hooligans
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Source: http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk/news/…life.4107038.jp

I feared for my life, says caterer caught in Battle of Manchester
(The southern reporter)
22 May 2008
By Andrew Keddie
A KELSO businessman has recalled how he feared for his life as violent Rangers fans went on the rampage in Manchester, scene of last week's infamous UEFA Cup Final.
And Mark Hay, owner of the Queen's Head Hotel in Kelso and the Town Arms pub in Selkirk, is also counting the financial cost of what should have been a major moneyspinner for his company.

Mr Hay runs Cheers Licensing Caterers which, through main sponsors Carlsberg, won the contract to operate the large beer tents in the two "fan zones" of Piccadilly Gardens and Albert Square.

"I have never been so ashamed of being Scottish," said Mr Hay, who claims rioting supporters caused damage worth at least £10,000 to his bar equipment before and during the Ibrox side's clash with Zenit St Petersburg.

"Although I have been in this business 24 years, I have never been so scared: I really feared for my life."

Mr Hay had taken around 10 staff from the Borders in a fleet of vehicles to fulfil the contract. Another 65 bar staff had been recruited through a Manchester agency.

But an hour before the match started at 7.45pm, he was forced to close the Piccadilly Gardens bar because fans were climbing on the marquee, which was collapsing, and throwing bottles at staff.

Mr Hay said that when the big screen transmitting the match in the zone broke down, he and his colleague Lee Downey found themselves in the firing line.

"Angry fans were looking for someone to blame and they targeted us because we had closed the bar and sent the other staff away. Fans were surging towards us, many with bottles in their hands.

"Fortunately there were a fair number of Borders fans there who knew us and they managed to clear a path through the masses so we could get out. We literally had to abandon everything and run."

Mr Hay is now taking legal advice over filing a damages claim against Manchester City Council.

"I had been there since Sunday overseeing our operations, but when we arrived at Piccadilly Gardens at 10am on the day of the match there were already thousands of fans, most of whom were drunk, with large carry-outs, including bottles. We had been assured the site was secure and that no fans would be allowed there at that time.

"Things got worse as the day went on and staff were subjected to terrible abuse for wearing the green tops supplied by Carlsberg.

"It seemed to really kick off at around 6pm with thousands breaking the security fences, climbing all over our vehicles and our marquee. They were punching and kicking holes in the bar and I had no alternative but to close things down at about 6.30."

Mr Hay continued: "Contrary to press reports, the atmosphere was hostile all day and it just got worse and some of the worst behaviour came, not from hooded youngsters, but from fans aged between 30 and 50.

"We watched in horror as private security guards took off their uniforms and fled long before the game started. The police, if you could find one, were unwilling to help us.
It was terrifying.”

An estimated 500 Rangers fans from the Borders were in the city for the final, many travelling in minibuses connected with supporters clubs or local pubs.

The full article contains 542 words and appears in Southern Reporter newspaper.

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Keir Radnedge in World Soccer Magazine (June 08)
"No excuses for Rangers fans

No one could agree on the numbers and no one could agree on the causes. But the fact of crowd trouble in Manchester during the UEFA Cup Final is indisputable.

One Zenit St Petersburg fan was knifed and dozens of Rangers fans were arrested, mostly in the city centre.

The city council was blamed for underestimating the number of ticketless Rangers supporters; the council was also blamed for the failure, moments before kick-off, of a public viewing screen. But the major part of the blame lay, as ever, with alcohol-fuelled fans.

Zenit supporters needed visas to enter England; it's a pity the same could not be said for Rangers fans."

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"The first act on stage lasted only 20 minutes out of the 45 minutes scheduled because they were pelted with cans and coins. Fans jumped over the security barrier and climbed on top of the sales unit. Large numbers of people were jumping up and down on the roof and urinating on top of the unit. Although the police were called the sheer numbers surrounding them meant there was little they could do" – no, not an account of the weekend's Download festival, but Uefa's official report into the pre-match Euro Vase final violence in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens."
(Guardian June 2008)
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