Borussia Dortmund hit Rangers milestone as Europa League clash takes German giants back to the future

Borussia Dortmund will celebrate a massive milestone when they play Rangers - and there's a pleasing harmony to the landmark.

This week sees Gio van Bronckhorst take his side to Germany to face the Bundesliga heavyweights in the Europa League play-off round first leg.

Marco Rose's side are favourites to win the whole thing with many bookmakers, and boast a team full of stars like Julian Brandt, Mats Hummels and injury doubt Erling Haaland.

The Westfalenstadion is one of the most intimidating arenas in Europe, and the match will be BVB's 1000th at the stadium.

And in a striking coincidence they'll face the same opponent who they took on in their very first continental clash at the stadium.

Their famous ground - now officially known as Signal Iduna Park - was built for the 1974 World Cup Finals and one of the first games was Scotland's opening 2-0 win in the tournament against Zaire.

Although Dortmund became the first German team to win a European trophy when they won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1966 at Hampden beating Liverpool 2-1 after extra time, they didn't play their first European game in their new stadium until 1982 after going through a period of decline and even suffering relegation.

They drew 0-0 with Rangers in front of 54,000 fans and the Scots won 2-0 in Glasgow in the second leg to ease through the UEFA Cup, first round tie.

Incredibly, that tie against Rangers in 1982 was Dortmund's first game in Europe for 16 years...and their previous game was also against the Ibrox side in the Cup-Winners Cup in 1966, where Rangers knocked the holders out in the second round.

Out of their 999 games, Dortmund have scored 2,173 goals since the 1974 opening and 152 opponents have played there including Rangers on three