Rangers will join the elite of European football when the draw for the Champions' League takes place in Monaco this afternoon.
Last night they were able to survive the second leg of their second preliminary round game against Parma, the team which won the UEFA Cup last season after defeating the Ibrox club 4-2 on aggregate.
Rangers exacted their revenge last night when they were able to hold the Italian side to just a single goal in the stadium where Parma have never lost a European game. The victory, of course, had been within their grasp after the 2-0 victory they had at Ibrox two weeks ago.
Now the Scottish champions are set for a #10m bonanza when they play in the group matches, and after this result their Dutch coach Dick Advocaat claimed: ''There are three other Italian teams in the Champions' League and of these I would take AC Milan before either Lazio or Fiorentina. But, really, I am not yet thinking about tomorrow's draw. All that concerns me just now is the way my team performed out there.
''We knew last season that Parma were a strong team with a very strong squad of players and we lost to them. Now we have won and this is a tremendous result for us. All the players worked really hard tonight and I cannot praise them enough. This was a difficult game for us and the players could not afford to stop working at any stage.
''We might have scored ourselves. We had two chances to get goals at the beginning of the
second half. But, then, when they scored with around half an hour left to play, we had some problems.
''Tonight was very different from the first match, but we have been able to give Scottish football a boost by going into the Champions' League and it is also an important night for Rangers Football Club. We only started to build this squad of players a little over a year ago and I think you can see how we have progressed in that period.
''People should remember that Parma won the UEFA Cup at the end of last season. That is the standard of the opposition we faced here tonight. And that is what makes the result so pleasing.''
Advocaat added: ''I think you all saw Ortega diving during the game just as I said he would do. He is a very good player, but he does go down easily in tackles. I warned my players about this.''
As well as the powerful Parma team, the Rangers players also had to combat the searing 80 degrees-plus heat in the Ennio Tardini Stadium and Polish full back Dariusz Adamczuk admitted later: ''The heat made it very very hard for us. None of us were comfortable, but we knew that we had to overcome the conditions and we did so.
''This was a massive, massive result for the club and it was
easily the biggest game of my career. I have never known an atmosphere like that.
''Our supporters were superb. They helped us just as they helped us in the first leg. You know, if Tony Vidmar has scored at the start of the second half I think the game would have been all over. But his shot hit the bar and that was hard for us to accept.''
It was after that when Johan Walem scored the goal for Parma in 67 minutes which left Rangers battling to escape from this Italian city with the result they had dreamed of.
Advocaat did make the tactical alterations that he had suggested beforehand, with Neil McCann being left out to accommodate a three-man central defence composed of Lorenzo Amoruso, Sergio Porrini, and Craig Moore, with Dariusz Adamczuk and Tony Vidmar countering the thrusts from Diego Fuser and Paolo Vanoli on the flanks.
Later, the Scotland manager Craig Brown praised the Dutchman's team selection, saying: ''He read everything absolutely right. He won the tactical battle and he made a great decision late on when Parma put on Stanic and he immediately changed his own defence and sent Colin Hendry into the action to mark him. That was great management.
''I was also pleased to see how well Barry Ferguson did in that kind of situation and he will be in my squad for our next two European games. It was also pleasing from my point of view that Colin and Neil McCann were given a taste of the action.''
Lorenzo Amoruso, Rangers' Italian captain, will miss the first Champions' League match after collecting a second yellow card against his countrymen.
He shrugged: ''It was a bad moment for me, because I knew that I would be out and I told you before the game that playing in the Champions' League has been my ambition.
''But I do think that people will now sit up and take interest in Rangers. No-one in Italy believed that we would get this result over the two legs.
''It is huge for the club because Parma are highly respected all over Europe as well as in Italy. They have some really good
players as we saw tonight.''
Scottish Football Association chief executive David Taylor last night celebrated Rangers' qualification into the Champions' League.
Taylor came to office last month vowing that Scotland would no longer be seen as a footballing backwater, and he sees the Ibrox club's two-legged triumph over Parma as a sure sign of what can be achieved by the Premier League.
''It is brilliant,'' said Taylor, who watched the game on television in his Glasgow home. ''Scottish football is finally on its way back. I realise there weren't many Scottish players in the Rangers team, but we have to start somewhere.''
Match report - Page 37
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