Off to Lublin (Not in Green)

Kilmarnock and St Mirren kicked off Scotland’s European campaign a couple of weeks ago now, and whilst Kilmarnock have parachuted down to the Conference League after their defeat to Cercle Brugge, St Mirren have marched on in that same competition following victory over Valur. So for now we still have all five teams competing.

We’ll come back to Kilmarnock and St Mirren on Thursday of course. Hearts are still waiting for another fortnight before they’ll face the winner of Kryvbas Kryvhi Rih of Ukraine and Viktoria Plzen of Czechia, whilst Celtic don’t need to qualify at all and so won’t start their campaign until September. However, today we get to focus on Rangers who will begin their Champions League qualification campaign tonight.

It can’t be often in European competitions that both legs of a tie are being played away from the traditional home stadium of that team, but this is the quirk we find ourselves in as Rangers travel to Lublin in Poland to take on Dynamo Kyiv for the 7pm oor time first leg of the third qualifying round. Premier Sports have the rights to this first leg so you can watch it there.

Of course, we know why Dynamo have to play away from Kyiv at the moment, so I’m not going to go into that here because I’d rather focus on the football matters, but it does make this preview slightly trickier because it’s not only a different ground but it’s also a whole other country!

Or at least it would, but Rangers have never actually faced specifically Ukrainian opposition in Europe before this tie. But that’s not to say Dynamo Kyiv have never played Rangers! Back in the 1987/88 season, the then Soviet champions lost 2-1 on aggregate to the Scottish champions. The 1-0 win in the first leg in Kyiv ended up not being enough as Rangers turned it around – but we’ll save that for next week.

The game tonight in Lublin will be the seventh time that a Rangers team have visited Poland though, and it’s mostly been a positive place for Rangers to go. Mind you, it didn’t start off that way. The first visit came in 1969/70 in the Cup Winners’ Cup second round, with Gornik Zabrze winning 3-1 in a tie where both legs were the same scoreline.

Funnily enough, Gornik were also the hosts for Rangers the round after they knocked out Dynamo Kyiv in 1987/88. And even more curious was the fact that the home leg for Rangers was also a 3-1 scoreline, but this time it was in their favour. However, the game in Poland was a 1-1 draw, an Ally McCoist penalty making things safe on away goals as well as the big aggregate advantage before the equaliser in the second half.

The following season, in the UEFA Cup first round, Rangers were in Katowice and picked up a 4-2 win. Terry Butcher with the first two goals after Katowice had levelled the tie with an early goal, followed by Iain Durrant and Ian Ferguson after Katowice had equalised on the night.

The best result in Poland for Rangers came in the 2004/05 UEFA Cup group stage. Back then you only played teams once home or away and not both – something we’re going to get used to this season with the new formats of the league stages in Europe – and in this case it was a 5-0 win away to Amica Wronki.

I can’t find a single video with all the highlights, so here’s the Peter Lovenkrands goal from that night. It’s probably the best goal of the five, it was the opening goal, and it was followed by second half goals from Nacho Novo, Fernando Ricksen, a penalty from Shota Arveladze and finally a goal from Steven Thompson.

In the 2019/20 Europa League playoff round, Legia Warsaw were the opponents, but the game in Poland was a goalless draw. Rangers went on to win the home leg and therefore the tie late on through Alfredo Morelos to progress to the group stage.

Lech Poznań were the most recent Polish hosts for Rangers, that coming in the 2021/22 Europa League group stage. This time it was a 2-0 win for Rangers, Cedric Itten and Ianis Hagi with the goals. So Lublin is a new city for Rangers to visit at least.

They may have only faced Rangers once, but Dynamo Kyiv are no strangers to hosting Scottish sides. Perhaps the most famous example is that Kyiv hold the distinction of being the team that knocked out the reigning European champions Celtic in 1967/68! The game in Kyiv was a 1-1 draw, we’ll come to the real damage next week when we talk about Kyiv in Scotland.

That was the second time they’d faced Celtic, and the second time they’d drawn 1-1 at home, the first being the quarter final of the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1965/66. No footage of this one though.

They did finally beat Celtic at home in the 1986/87 European Cup first round, picking up a 3-1 win. The Rangers tie the following season that I mentioned earlier is actually their last meeting with a Scottish side, and the only time it wasn’t against Celtic. It does mean that in four games so far they’re unbeaten at home against Scottish sides. Although, as noted already, this one tonight isn’t actually at home unfortunately.

Whilst this is Rangers entry into European competition this season, Dynamo Kyiv have already played one round. They took care of Partizan Belgrade in the previous round, winning 9-2 on aggregate and specifically 6-2 in the “home” first leg in Lublin.

As with all the Scottish sides except for Celtic, the path to the league stage is now known. The weird quirk happens here though, where the loser of this tie goes directly into the Europa League group and does not drop into the Europa League playoff! The thinking is apparently that if they weren’t qualifying for the Champions League they would be worthy of direct entry to the Europa League.

But Rangers will of course be hoping that its Dynamo Kyiv that do that, and the winner of this tie will face a Champions League playoff round against the winner of RB Salzburg of Austria and FC Twente of the Netherlands. Yes there’s a chance Rangers will be in the Netherlands for a third successive Champions League playoff round! That tie kicks off in Austria at 7.45pm oor time tonight if anyone is keeping an eye on it.

The Ukrainian league kicked off at the weekend, but Dynamo Kyiv were given the weekend off to prepare more for this tie so their opener away to Olesandriya was postponed. Which is very odd as they do have to play on Friday in the league away to Vires Rivne in between the two legs of this time.

Rangers did kick off their Scottish Premiership campaign with a goalless draw away to Hearts on Saturday. I promise the video is here, but Sky Sports make you click into it rather than just viewing it on here.

Good luck to Rangers tonight in Poland, and we’ll be back with a preview of the two home legs for Kilmarnock and St Mirren on Thursday. And then of course we’ll do this all gain when Rangers host Dynamo next week… just not at home.