Rangers wary of return to Prague as memories of abuse from 'crowd full of kids' are rekindled
The Ibrox club have a bleak recent history with the two leading teams from the Czech capital, where they will travel for Thursday’s Europa League encounter that marks only Clement’s second game in charge. Think Rangers and a side from Prague, and the mind is immediately drawn back to the racial abuse of Glen Kamara by Slavia Prague’s Ondrej Kudela in a March 2021 Europa League encounter in Glasgow. The defender subsequently was handed a ten-game ban from UEFA for an incident that spilled over into post-match scuffles and prompted unseemly attempts by Slavia as a club deny and obfuscate over Kudela’s context.
Yet, potentially more depressing was what followed when Rangers were then drawn with Sparta in the Europa League the following season. Although the bitter rivals of Slavia, when the Ibrox men travelled to Prague for a 1-0 group defeat in September 2021, the hostile reception for Kamara shocked, not least because of the identity of those who rounded on the Finnish international. It is an experience that understandably still troubles Rangers captain James Tavernier.
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Hide Ad“It was different because it was a crowd full of kids,” he said of the confrontation played with 10,000 schoolchildren admitted as the only spectators, covid-19 restrictions on mass gatherings then in place having initially suggested the stands would remain empty. “You don't really hear too much when you play but Glen went off and that's when you heard the boos. You were thrown back,” said the full-back. “Also when they said it was going to be behind closed doors then changed it to kids. I don't think we can be the ones to decide what happens so we've got to go over there as a team, block everything out, and try to win the game.
“We're in 2023 now so we hope we don't hear the same. But it's not like this issue has been erased in the world so we will wait and see. We are just turning up to play a game of football and want to put on a show for our fans that are travelling over.”
The only show Rangers were able to put on for their own support in their last excursion to the continent was of the horror variety. Their first outing subsequent to the sacking of Michael Beale, hopes of a reaction the the desperate 3-1 home loss over Aberdeen that cost them the Englishman his job four days’ earlier were kiboshed by a wretched showing under interim manager Steven Davis against Aris in Limassol three weeks ago. Indeed, the 2-1 defeat to which it condemned them already has an unwelcome high ranking in the club’s all-time worst European outcomes.
That was then for Tavernier. The present he sees as altogether different after Clement was able to sow the first seeds of a recovery with an opening game 4-0 victory at home to Hibs on Saturday. “The group is level [all four teams in Group C on three points after two games]. It's a restart now because we have a new gaffer and can still come top of the group,” he said. “Prague is the first game of the boss taking charge in Europe and it's a game we want to do really well in. It's a place where we've been before, we know what it's all about. We will try to go over there and get the three points and get back on track of getting through to the next round.
“It was a difficult night in Cyprus. The performance didn't go our way. I couldn't really put my finger on what it was down to. We obviously conceded two goals that were avoidable but we put ourselves in a good position against Betis at the start of the group [with the 1-0 win at home] and now we are even. It's time to put more points on the board and get through to the next round.
“Domestic and European football are two different standards with different ways to set up and the way we want to play. Most of the weeks we are playing compact teams with ten or eleven players behind the ball and we are trying to break them down. In Europe the game is more open and you get more chances but they also have more of an attacking threat so it's something that we relish and we have had really good success in this tournament. We always want to win and it's a competition that a few of us have held really close in getting to the final [in 2022] and we hope to repeat the great scenes that we had in the build up to that.”