Ianis Hagi's Rangers return: Gruelling rehab, coach tendencies, travels and having '£4m player through door'

It doesn’t come as any huge surprise to learn that Ianis Hagi is a football obsessive. When you are the son of Romanian soccer royalty – the gallus Gheorghe, Maradona of the Carpathians – then there is surely little choice in the matter. The apple has not fallen far from the tree on that front.

Hagi Jr, though, has watched more football than even he would have liked of late. A year has now passed since the Rangers forward sustained a serious knee injury in an otherwise routine Scottish Cup victory over Stirling Albion. Surgery followed a few days later and then 12 months of gruelling, laborious and no doubt tedious rehabilitation.

There have been trips to Amsterdam, Portugal and back home to Romania to help alleviate some of the boredom and preserve the 24 year-old’s mental health. He has watched his team-mates in action, both to lend his support but also to study their performances in a more analytical manner in the way that a coach – like his father – would. A nod to a future career switch perhaps. “I like coaching so even though I am young I am always keen,” he revealed late last year. “I’ve grown up beside my father and him being a coach, I always looked differently at games. Having more free time I’ve been involved in different ways to understand the perspective of a coach.” All of that, however, has been done to fill time, to try to make the weeks and months of recuperation somehow more palatable as he pursued his ultimate goal of a return to first-team football. And now, finally, that day has arrived.

Giovanni van Bronckhorst was the manager who had to deal with the consequences of losing Hagi last January but it is his successor who will now benefit from his return. Michael Beale was part of the coaching staff that brought the player to Rangers in January 2020 and kept in touch sporadically with him during his period of convalescence. A carefully-managed return to play schedule will conclude with this afternoon’s home game against St Johnstone where, all being well, Hagi should emerge from the substitutes’ bench for his first league game since scoring in a 1-1 draw with Aberdeen three days before that fateful night against Stirling. Todd Cantwell is expected to make Rangers debut after completing his transfer from Norwich City but don’t be surprised if the biggest cheer of the day is reserved for the returning Romanian. “He’s not going to be 90 minutes right now,” said Beale of Hagi’s fitness. “But it’s a nice landmark that he is back in the squad. With three home games coming up out of the next four, it gives me an opportunity to feed him back in.”

Rangers playmaker Ianis Hagi has been sidelined for a year by a knee injury.

Beale admits he was concerned when word reached him last year of Hagi’s setback. Knowing how much playing means to the former Genk forward, the then Aston Villa coach wondered just how he would cope. It served as some relief, then, to discover. upon succeeding van Bronckhorst in late November. that Hagi was far more chipper than might have been expected in the circumstances.

“I just dropped him the odd text,” revealed the manager. “Obviously when he got the injury you want to support him through that because you know it’s going to be a long, hard 10 to 12 months for someone who is living away from his family and really does live for football. Ianis someone who, if he’s not playing, he’s talking about it or watching it. I was wondering how it was going to affect him mentally but he’s done ever so well.

“It’s great that he’s at the back end of it. It was the year anniversary last week from doing it and he came in talking about it when none of us wanted to talk about it as we felt we didn’t want to bring it up. He was very much thinking about it. He had this date set in mind probably four or five weeks ago and we’ve been working towards it so it’s great to have him back in the squad. It does feel like the equivalent of having another £4m player through the door.”

Hagi’s performances in his first two years in a Rangers shirt haven’t always been stellar but there have been glimpses of his potential, most notably in the match-winning Europa League double against Braga not long after arriving and then in his only full season when he was a near ever-present, scoring eight times. Expectation will need to be managed after such a lengthy absence but Beale believes the forward is desperate to make up for lost time.

Rangers manager Michael Beale is looking forward to having the Romanian back in action.

“Missing this year has obviously been damaging for him,” added the manager. “Just towards the end of my first time here, he was filling out. In Europe, in the games where there wasn’t so much physicality, and it wasn’t more about contact, it was about pure technique and the art of football, he always played really well. In those games against Braga he was absolutely outstanding.

“Just before we left, he scored a fantastic goal away at Brondby in the group stage of the Europa League. He has probably been robbed of a year of his career but he is even more eager now. I think his best days are in front of him both for Rangers and for his national team.”