GIOVANNI van Bronckhorst outlined his pride for his Rangers squad tonight as they progressed to the play-off round in the Champions League after defeating Union Saint-Gilloise at a sold-out Ibrox.
The manager recognised the supporters’ pivotal role this evening as his squad overcame a two-goal first-leg deficit against Karel Geraerts’ side to progress to the next round in Europe.
Speaking exclusively to RangersTV following his squad’s incredible performance, he said: “It’s another amazing night in Europe, there was a lot of pressure on us to deliver and go to the next round.
“I thought we played really well today and kept the pressure on them – we know that the atmosphere can be very hostile, but we created that atmosphere with the fans. I’m very proud of the performance of my team.
“It’s very important because we know that the fans are always there, if we have a performance like we did today the crowd will be more hostile. They kept pushing us to move forward, at moments in the game we had to take the right decision to go into quick attacks. We knew that we were capable of doing this, today we did it again.”
The boss took time to praise his squad after summer signing, Malik Tillman, netted the match-winning goal in this evening's second leg game.
He added: “I’m really happy with Malik, he came this season and is displaying very early how strong he is. It was an amazing goal, it was really high, and I think that the goalie was a bit surprised, in the end, it was the final goal for us to go through.
“They [Union Saint-Gilloise] had some chances; I think the biggest one Jon [McLaughlin] saved in the second half. It’s a big performance and we needed that, so I’m very proud of the team.”
Van Bronckhorst emphasised that the squad are fully focussed on next week’s play-off match against PSV and will do everything that they can to progress further in the tournament.
He added: “We’re still in contention to go to group stages of the Champions League, we’ll be there to prove ourselves and to do everything possible to in Champions League this season.”
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