A PROUD Philippe Clement shared his delight as Rangers qualified for the UEFA Europa League round of 16 this evening.
A 2-1 victory over Union Saint-Gilloise at Ibrox, and results elsewhere, saw a dramatic finish to the league phase with Rangers straight into the knock-out stage in March.
Speaking to RangersTV at full-time, he said: “I am super proud of the team and the squad because so many people have played in these European games. It is a big performance.
“From the top eight, we played against four teams in Olympiacos, Lyon, Manchester United and Tottenham so it makes the performance even bigger.
“It is massive for the whole squad. Today we had to start with Tav at centre-back, then after 15 minutes Leon King gets injured and Ross McCausland, a right winger, plays right-full back and he played a brilliant game in that position. It shows that this squad is really working hard together, and everybody wants to give everything to get the results for this club.”
Nico Raskin and Vaclav Cerny got the goals for Rangers, with Ibrox rocking at full-time as the position was confirmed.
Clement continued: “At the end, Union didn’t have anything to lose, and they threw everything up front.
“We had to make some changes, Vaclav had a problem with his hamstring last week and he was stretching in one moment so it is dangerous to take risks with those kinds of things.
“Nedim and Hamza were getting tired, so we threw the young boys in for them. It was of course a big experience for them, but everybody dug in and got the result together with the fans who were also brilliant.
“The atmosphere was amazing, the people here might get used to it after several years but I know a lot of people in Union and they all said the crowd was fantastic. It is an amazing place to play games of football so we are really delighted that we can do it every week.”
On the league phase as a whole, Clement added: “Everybody said when the draw was made this was a Champions League group not a Europa League group.
“You see the teams who qualified, they could've played Champions League also, so it is a massive achievement to be with those teams.
“Also, if you look at the teams who were behind us in the table at the end there are a lot of teams with a big reputation a really big budget, so it has been a very good performance from the whole squad.”