Rangers vs SC Braga preview: Third time's the charm
Rangers face a familiar opponent in the form of SC Braga travelling to Ibrox
This article was written for Scottishfootball.info by Adam Bortkiewicz, a Rangers fan and online sports writer, who has his own Rangers blog you can follow.
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Rangers are returning to Europa League action with another home fixture. This time we welcome the Portuguese club SC Braga to Ibrox stadium. Fans will be more than a little bit familiar with this set of opponents.
History
I don’t need to remind any current readers of our previous meetings with SC Braga, but I love a trip down memory lane so I will anyway.
Back in 2019/20, Steven Gerrard’s second season at the club, we faced tomorrow’s opponents for the first time, a young Ruben Amorim in the dugout, drawing them in the round of 32 of the Europa League (as it was known back then).
In what was to become a theme, the home game was a far more frenetic and fast paced affair than the away leg.
Playing on maybe the worst Ibrox pitch in recent memory, Rangers toiled for the first 60 minutes of the match. Despite a strong atmosphere provided by the home fans.
In just over 10 minutes Rangers were a goal down to a stupendous swerving effort from distance by Fransérgio, the Braga captain.
Alfredo Morelos missed a few presentable chances to level the scores. 29 goals to his name by that point, he wouldn’t get any more that season.
Braga punished those misses by going 2-0 up through Abel Ruiz after a neat move saw him collect a back heel and reverse his finish across the body of Allan McGregor from the edge of the area.
We were certainly in doom and gloom territory by this stage. It looked like getting even worse when the visitors raced in on goal in a counter attack. But as he did so many times for Rangers, Allan McGregor made an excellent save to keep the score at 2-0.
It looked an even bigger save when about 5 minutes later, the ball found Ianis Hagi in space on the right. The Romanian, freshly signed on loan from Genk in January, cut inside and arrowed a finish in off the inside of the near post.
The ball was collected and returned to the halfway line, Ibrox was rocking and everyone could feel the magic in the air.
Borna Barišić was lost to injury afterwards, but rather than introducing a defensive minded player for the Croatian left back. Gerrard opted to move Joe Aribo to left back.
It turned out to be a touch of genius, as the Nigerian would collect the ball on the left, then combine with Hagi before coming inside, sitting down the Braga defence and slotting the ball past the keeper.
2-2 seemed a great result given how the first 65 minutes of the game had gone for Rangers, most would have taken it.
Not Ianis Hagi.
With 10 or so minutes left, Rangers’ number 7 stood over a free kick about 30 yards out. Instead of delivering into the area, he went for goal, and with a fortunate deflection off the wall wrong footing the keeper, it sailed into the back of the net.
Pandemonium, I know you will want to relive those memories yourself, so here are the highlights:
It also spawned the oft quoted phrase from Ianis Hagi in his post match interview.
“Ibrox, baby! It’s just different!”
The away leg produced one of the best defensive performances in the Gerrard era, as Rangers were compact and relaxed under pressure from Braga. The tie was sealed when Ryan Kent was sent through on goal and coolly finished past the keeper to make it 4-2 on aggregate to Rangers.
Rangers also met Braga on the road to Seville. A scrappy away leg ended one nil to the home side.
But if there’s one thing that Braga know about playing Rangers, it’s that Ibrox is just different, baby.
Rangers wasted no time restoring parity on aggregate as a Barišić cross was flicked to the back post by Aribo for the onrushing James Tavernier. He finished well from a tight angle, as he did time and time again in that magical run.
It looked like Rangers already had the lead in the tie when Roofe headed home a Borna cross, but the goal was disallowed for a handball in the build-up.
Rangers didn’t feel sorry for themselves though, a brilliant long ball from Calvin Bassey found Kemar Roofe in behind. The English-born Jamaican international was clever and got his body in front of the defender who promptly took him down. A penalty and a red card. Rangers were in dreamland.
Tavernier made no mistake from the spot and Rangers were already imagining a place in the Europa League semi-final.
Roofe had a goal disallowed for offside and several presentable chances were passed up by Rangers.
They were made to pay for this profligacy when Braga levelled the aggregate scores with a great goal from a corner.
Nerves set in as we went into extra time. Surely Rangers couldn’t throw away such a brilliant European run against the weakest opponent (on paper)?
Turns out they couldn’t, an Aribo cross found it’s way across the box and Kemar Roofe finally had his goal.
Braga understandably wilted in extra time (not helped by another red card for dissent), just in time for Scott Arfield to miss a hilariously easy chance to put the game to bed fully. Thankfully he was saving his goal for the game that weekend as Rangers came from a goal behind to dump Celtic out of the Scottish Cup at Hampden.
What about now?
I hope we all enjoyed reliving those magical Ibrox nights. I certainly did!
We can’t win a football match with great memories though, sadly.
This current iteration of Braga sit 7th in the Liga Portugal. 14 points off first place after 11 games.
They’ve fared far better in Europe, progressing through 3 rounds of qualifying comfortably and winning 3 of 4 league phase games so far. Their only loss being a 4-3 home loss in the round of fixtures against Genk. Braga have already won in Glasgow this season, having turned over Celtic at Parkhead by 2 goals to nil and never really looked troubled.
Braga are actually higher in the Europa League table than any side we’ve faced so far, sitting in 5th on goal difference.
Braga’s squad is a nice mix of exciting young player like Pau Víctor (signed from Barcelona for 12m euros), Mario Dorgeles (signed from FC Nordsjaelland for 11m euros) and Gabriel Moscardo (on loan from PSG).
The Portuguese have supplemented this youth with experienced heads like Ricardo Horta, 31 and played against Rangers in both previous ties, and João Moutinho, 39 and has played for Sporting CP, Porto, Monaco and Wolves.
Stylistically, the visitors favour a 3-4-2-1 formation, which Rangers should be used to seeing given they largely operate in a 3-5-2/3-4-2-1 shape under Danny Röhl.
The front 3 is fluid and is very capable of popping up in areas all over the final third. If you look at the positioning of the Braga attackers for Ricardo Horta’s opener from distance against Celtic, Horta (21) was nominally on the left of the front three but he’s dropped into the space on the right to pick up the ball. Another member of the front three, Pau Víctor (just out of shot on the left) has dropped into the wide areas to support wing backs efforts to get inside. On the far side you can Yanis Da Rocha, the right sided wing-back, making his way into the box on the right. Alongside Horta in that space in front of the defence is one of the centre midfielders, Gorby (29).
Celtic struggled to deal with the rotations and movement of the Braga attack. I would imagine that Danny Röhl will be focusing on maintaining a solid back 3 shape that maintains it’s position to allow the midfielders to move with the Braga attack.
Sadly, Rangers lack any real pace in the current side, as that is one of the weaknesses of this Braga side defensively.
As a consequence of having such a fluid attack skilled in rotations, when they surrender the ball they are extremely vulnerable to transitions. From looking at some clips this season, most of the goals they have conceded while deploying their 3-4-2-1 shape (against Genk they went for a 4-3-3) have come in transition and teams being able to isolate any of their defenders in a 1 v 1.
He’s obviously been fairly inconsistent of late, but with that in mind I’d expect to see Djeidi Gassama deployed in the front three of Rangers. We should be looking to get the ball into the forwards quickly and have Gassama standing up the Portuguese defenders.
Is it all for nothing?
The other school of thought is that after deploying a back 4 at the weekend due to the available personnel, the manager will do the same here. Despite the potentially makeshift nature of the back 3, I’d suggest that we start with the 3-4-2-1 shape we’ve become accustomed to.
Our goal has to be to maintain some solidity against the tricky opposition attack and then taking advantage of the opportunities available in transition.
We aren’t a squad capable of taking the fight to superior teams technically, even at home, we’ve seen that illustrated on many occasions this season. We have 0 Europa League points for a reason.
It feels quite depressing to be so pessimistic about Rangers chances to hurt Braga outside of transition. But we’ve seen such little evidence of us being a good attacking unit this season that I can’t really say anything else.
The club will be reeling internally after the double sacking on Monday, which I covered, and you can access that article below.
That turmoil shouldn’t affect the squad of players we have on the pitch. Well apart from Youssef Chermiti, who is presumably distantly related to Kevin Thelwell given the latter’s propensity for signing him for exorbitant sums of money.
There has been some suggestion that Röhl was pushing for the sacking of his superiors, swiftly shedding the “yes man” reputation some had given him before his appointment.
Hopefully that attitude is rewarded with investment in January and we can see what the manager can really do without being hamstrung with an inept squad.
It’s hard to feel very optimistic for tomorrow given the performances across the Europa league fixtures so far.
At the very least, going off past fixtures against Braga at Ibrox, we are in for a treat in terms of entertainment.