Revisiting when rampant Rangers started their Champions League campaign with a five-star performance.
After more disappointment than joy in Europe throughout the 1990s, Rangers fans entered the new decade with renewed optimism. The arrival of Dick Advocaat in 1998, coupled with the calibre of player he attracted to Ibrox, had already brought more respectable continental performances. Winning the Champions League remained a distant dream, but with the right draw, supporters felt that a deep run into the competition was no longer unrealistic. By the summer of 2000, Rangers were preparing for a third European campaign during Advocaat’s Dutch revolution. Ultimately, it would end in frustration, but not before producing a couple of memorable Group Stage victories, with one of them against the very opponents Rangers will meet again this Thursday, 25 years later.
Qualification to the group stages was straightforward in 2000/01. It was never going to match the drama of the previous season, when Rangers had to overcome Hernán Crespo, Lilian Thuram, Gianluigi Buffon, and company in a famous two-legged triumph over Parma. That victory remains a benchmark; the Ibrox leg is still recalled more than 25 years on whenever debates about the loudest night the stadium has ever experienced arise.
The route began with little fuss in the summer of 2000 as Lithuanian champions FBK Kaunas were brushed aside in the second qualifying round. Seeded for the final qualifier, Rangers avoided dangerous names such as AC Milan, Valencia, and Leeds United. There were still potential banana skins in the unseeded pot, namely Hamburg and 1860 Munich, who had both finished in the top four of the Bundesliga the season before. Fortune was kinder to Rangers this time than in 1999/00. Danish champions Herfølge, the lowest-ranked team in the draw, provided the opposition, and Advocaat’s men swept them away with a 6–0 aggregate win to secure safe passage to the group stage.
Attention then turned to the draw itself. And there was a genuine belief that Rangers could, and should, progress to the second group phase, a level they had yet to reach. Seeded in Pot 3, they avoided the true elite names of the competition. They landed in Group D alongside three domestic champions: Monaco of France, Galatasaray of Turkey, and Austria’s Sturm Graz. It wasn’t an easy section, but the expectation was clear. Qualification was more than achievable.
The opening night, in September 2000, brought Sturm Graz to Ibrox, and Rangers announced their intent in spectacular fashion. Under the lights, Advocaat’s side delivered a statement performance, dismantling the Austrians to record their biggest ever win in a Champions League group stage match, a margin that remains unbeaten at the time of writing.
Rangers lined up on the night with Stefan Klos behind a back four of Claudio Reyna, Bert Konterman, Lorenzo Amoruso, and Arthur Numan. An attack-minded midfield and forward line was made up of Barry Ferguson, Giovanni Van Bronckhorst, Jörg Albertz, Allan Johnston, Michael Mols, and recent signing Ronald De Boer.
And that eleven wasted no time in stamping their authority on the contest, taking the lead inside eight minutes. De Boer showed great determination to keep the ball in play and cut it back into the box, where Mols was perfectly placed to side-foot home for 1–0.
It was 2–0 just ten minutes later. Johnstone’s near-post cross was met by de Boer, who stole a march on his marker and finished from close range.
By the half-hour mark, the game was effectively over. Van Bronckhorst teed up Albertz, and the German drilled a low strike beyond the keeper from 15 yards to put Rangers 3-0 up.
The second half saw Advocaat’s men in cruise control, but they still found time to add to the scoring. On 70 minutes, de Boer again provided the spark, slipping a pass to van Bronckhorst who bulleted home in almost identical fashion to the goal he had created for Albertz earlier.
Further gloss was put on the scoreline with five minutes to play. Substitute Billy Dodds latched onto van Bronckhorst’s intelligent through ball and produced a delightful chip from the edge of the area, lifting it over the keeper to round off an exceptional 5-0 victory.
Rangers built on their flying start to the 2000/01 group stage, following up the 5–0 demolition of Sturm Graz with an impressive 1–0 win away to Monaco, sealed by a late van Bronckhorst strike. At that point, qualification looked almost certain. But momentum stalled when just a single point was taken from the double-header against Galatasaray, and worse followed with a dismal 2–0 defeat in Austria to the very side Rangers had destroyed only weeks earlier.
It all came down to the final group match at Ibrox against Monaco. Victory would see Rangers into the second group phase for the first time, while defeat meant elimination at the same stage for a second successive year. A draw might even have been enough, depending on the results elsewhere. In the end, it wasn’t to be. A late Monaco equaliser snatched a 2–2 draw, while Galatasaray and Sturm Graz also played out a draw in Istanbul, another 2-2, meaning both the Turks and the Austrians progressed. In doing so, dropped into the UEFA Cup, where they faced Kaiserslautern. A strong 1–0 first-leg win at Ibrox put them in a good position to qualify, but the Germans dominated the second leg, winning 3-0 on the night, 3-1 on aggregate to end Rangers’ European journey.
It was a disappointing conclusion to a campaign that had promised so much, but that opening night hammering of Sturm Graz still shines as one of Rangers’ great European performances.
Fast-forward to the present, and the current Rangers squad now prepares to travel to Austria to face the same opponents in the Europa League. Supporters will be hoping history repeats itself, and that another famous victory against Sturm Graz can be claimed to help kickstart the 2025/26 European campaign.