Philippe Clement gambled with Rangers’ Euro chances and lost, says Bill Leckie, that first leg came back to haunt them

RANGERS gaffer Philippe Clement played a massive game of risk and reward with his team’s European chances last night.

And lost big time.

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Philippe Clement’s Rangers risk didn’t pay off, reckons Bill LeckieCredit: Getty

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Bill reckons it was a risk too farCredit: John Kirkby – The Sun Glasgow

Had his plan of piling men forward at set-pieces and leaving no one back on halfway worked, it would have been hailed as a masterstroke.

Trouble is, it only had to go wrong once to be seen as a punt too far.

Cue a red-shirted cavalry charge on 66 minutes – and the goal that left Rangers wracked with regrets about a massive chance that got away.

One second, James Tavernier was looping a corner in from the right, Connor Goldson was nodding back across goal and Dessers was struggling to get the ball out of his feet. 

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The next?

Nicolas Otamendi was booting clear, Angel di Maria was waiting for the ball bouncing in the centre circle and little Rafa Silva was sprinting away, drawing Jack Butland and drilling into his bottom right corner.

The second the net rippled, the linesman on the Sandy Jardine Stand side raised his flag.

But the replays showed Silva was just inside his own half when the ball left his mate’s forehead and now there was one almighty pyramid of Portuguese elation as Slovakian ref Ivan Kruzliak made the sign and pointed to the centre circle.

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It was a goal that seemed to happen in a blur. Yet somehow, you’d seen it coming all night.

Every set-piece they won within sight of the posts, Rangers had everyone bar Jack Butland well inside the Benfica half.

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Clement’s idea was clear; push on top of them, squeeze them into their box – and if they break?

Well, the Belgian prides himself on producing teams who can run harder than the opposition and that’s what he was relying on them to do here.

If the visitors cleared and got up the park double pronto, the recovery runs needed to be properly lung-bursting.

Until that 66th minute, they always were. Sheer hard graft, harnessed to Benfica’s need for too many touches when the situation screamed out for pace and precision, had justified their gaffer’s faith in them.

Di Maria didn’t need too many touches, though. Just that cushioned header.

Silva didn’t faff about, he just zipped away from Mo Diomande and took the shortest route to the whites of Butland’s eyes.

And simple as that, the Europa League dream was dashed for Scotland’s league leaders.

That dream was real in the minutes and the mayhem before kick-off, depicted on a mammoth banner unfurled across half of the Broomloan Stand, a cartoon of Ibrox with a road leading away via signs for Seville, Limassol, Prague and Lisbon, with the legend across the bottom reading:

If They Go To Dublin.

It was a possibility UEFA were having kittens about. But they can rest a little easier now, because there will be no invasion to make Manchester 2008 look like a teddy bear’s picnic.

Let’s be honest, too. In a knockout stage that still includes Liverpool, Roma, AC Milan and West Ham, it would have been one hell of a stretch for this Rangers team to repeat their heroics of 16 years ago and of two years ago against Frankfurt in Seville.

Clement’s worked wonders to get them into pole position for the title and they probably punched above their weight to reach the Last 16 as group winners.

Yet even as four-fifths of a packed Ibrox rose to hail their efforts, players and punters alike must surely have been cursing the thought of what might have been.

I wrote after the first leg that they should have been gutted not to beat the poorest Benfica outfit in my lifetime.

Well, last night that result came back to haunt them, because they weren’t even close the the standards they set in the Estadio da Luz.

The sharpness wasn’t there, the pace going forward, the control in midfield.

Truth is, they could and maybe should have been picked off long before Silva finally picked a hole in their masterplan.

Maybe tomorrow or the next day, they’ll look back on this run and see it for what it was.

They’ll be hugely proud of themselves for staying in Europe after Christmas, while the rest of Scotland’s hopefuls turned out to be pretty hopeless on the big stage.

But this morning, it’ll sting like hell.

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And so it should.

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