Anyone who watched RB Leipzig vs Glasgow Rangers last night would have been forgiven for nodding off or at least losing the will to keep on watching.
What should have been an exciting Europa League semi-final between the pair was instead a drab affair in which neither looked like they actually wanted to win the thing.
It was eventually Leipzig who come out on top against Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side, with Angelino’s 85th-minute strike handing the Germans a slim advantage for when they travel to Ibrox for the second leg next week.
FAZ cover the game today and state that while Leipzig ‘laid the foundations’ for progress against Rangers, they were ‘unimaginative’, to say the least.
That is also reflected in the grades handed out by BILD, which again follow the German school grading system and don’t make pretty reading for either team.
To explain, 1 means very good, 2 is good, 3 is average, 4 is passable but still lacking, 5 is deficient, and 6 is insufficient. A 6 is the lowest possible grade, and, taking it back to the school grades, it means that not only were things not up to standard, but there was even a failure to understand the basics.
Fortunately for Rangers, nobody earns anything lower than a four, so everyone was ‘passable’ as far as BILD are concerned. John Lundstram does earn himself a 2, though, sharing top marks with Angelino.
The Leipzig scores are very similar, a further demonstration of how much of a middling affair the game turned out to be.
However, there is praise for Rangers’ fans, who turned up in force – ‘a good 7000’ according to FAZ and ‘dominated the city centre’ with their flags and atmosphere.
In fact, it’s claimed the chants from the two fan camps ‘kept the neutral spectator awake’ in the first half of the game.
Now, that might not be very interesting to some but given Europe is usually awash with reports of fan trouble, it’s nice to see some praise for Rangers fans here.
It’s a shame their team’s performance wasn’t up to the same level, with the second leg hopefully far more exciting that what was on offer last night.
