Rangers returned to the Champions League group stage this year for the first time since the 2010-11 season. It was a huge accomplishment for the Scottish giants, and a boost for USMNT duo Malik Tillman and James Sands.
The club surely knew the group stage would be a major step up from the qualifying rounds, but they could’ve never anticipated the pure carnage that would await them upon reaching the club game’s highest heights.
After losing 3-1 to Ajax on Tuesday, Rangers secured a piece of unwanted history. With six defeats in six games, two goals scored and 22 conceded, Rangers have officially had the worst group stage campaign in Champions League history.
-20 – Rangers’ goal difference of -20 is the worst for a side that lost all six group stage games in the UEFA Champions League in the competition’s history (F2, A22). Obliterated.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) November 1, 2022
Being drawn against red-hot Napoli and less-hot-but-still-Liverpool Liverpool was always going to be a big ask for Rangers, who lost those four games by a combined score of 15-1.
More curious was the team’s two defeats to Ajax by a combined score of 7-1. Ajax is in first place in the Eredivisie, leading PSV by just one point. To reach the group stage, Rangers defeated PSV 3-2 over two legs in the final qualifying round. Clearly, the transitive property didn’t quite bear out here.
Tillman and Sands each started four of Rangers’ six games and neither had any particularly shining moments. Sands was sent off against Napoli in Rangers’ second match, picking up a second yellow card early in the second half of a 3-0 defeat.
Speaking after Tuesday’s loss to Ajax, Rangers coach Giovanni van Bronckhorst sounded like the leader of a team who went into games knowing they were likely to lose.
“I won the competition (as a player with Barcelona) so I know the other side when you’re the team who comes on the pitch and already knows you’re going to win because of the difference,” he said.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that in hindsight, Van Bronckhorst and his players may well wish they’d lost to PSV and parachuted safely into the Europa League, a competition where they’d be unlikely to make the kind of unwanted history they must now carry with them.
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