Rangers have been drawn against Union Saint-Gilloise in the third qualifying round of the Champions League.
We only have to go back to 2020/21 when Belgian opposition in the form of Standard Liege and Royal Antwerp provided European opposition for Rangers, so how do Union Saint-Gilloise compare?
USG made the cut for Champions League qualification in the same way that Rangers did, by finishing as runners-up in their domestic competition. In the Jupiler League, the final standings saw Club Brugge take the crown as champions with Union just four points behind.
In Belgium, an end of season play-off system decides the outcome of the championship. That comes after the finish to the regular season, which saw USG on top with a lead of five points. They suffered with the rules of the play-off in which regular season points are halved, but ultimately two wins and a draw allowed Club Brugge to secure the title.
The final placings were as follows:
1 Club Brugge
2 Union Saint-Gilloise
3 Anderlecht
4 Antwerp
Standard Liege could only manage a 14th place finish in the regular season.
Over the course of the campaign, their results against the recent visitors to Ibrox were as follows:
USG 4 Standard 0
USG 1 Antwerp 2
Antwerp 0 USG 2
Standard 1 USG 3
—
Antwerp 0 USG 0
USG 0 Antwerp 1
Prepared
Coming off the back of a strong finish last season, Union Saint-Gilloise will be out to push on for further momentum and they have nothing to lose. They will be respected as opponents, but should be at a level similar to the likes of Royal Antwerp and Standard Liege that we witnessed in 2020/21.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Rangers will be favourites and rightly so. Now they have to go and prove it, with the games just three weeks away.
Preparations will be urned up a notch over the coming week, as will the level of opposition with the visits of Premier League West Ham and Tottenham Hotspur to Ibrox. Those games will represent the conclusion to pre-season with the Scottish Premiership opener on 30th July away to Livingston, to be followed by the 1st leg of the CL qualifier in Belgium just days later.
There can be no repeat of Malmo this time around, Rangers have to deliver to set up a Playoff tie for the attractive, lucrative group stages of the premier continental tournament.