Rangers’ Lundstram strikes late to beat RB Leipzig to Europa League final

The 60th game of Rangers’ season delivered the most memorable moment of all. There could be better – far better – to come in Seville on 18 May.

With Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s team on the ropes and RB Leipzig in the ascendancy, John Lundstram bulged the net in front of the Copland Road stand. The level of euphoria depicted a goal for the ages. Who cared that it was scrappy?

Rangers, a decade on from financial meltdown, will compete in a Europa League final. Leipzig will be sore about that given their prominence at the time of Lundstram’s intervention but the truth is Rangers’ effective football prevailed.

Rangers could take heart despite last week’s 1-0 loss in Saxony. Leipzig had been frustrated and blunt for long spells of that first leg tie, with Sunday’s Bundesliga defeat to Börussia Monchengladbach adding to a sense Rangers may be meeting Domenico Tedesco’s team at the right time. The counterpoint related to Leipzig’s useful propensity to score away goals in Europe; the claiming of the opening goal here would leave Rangers, who started without a recognised striker in their line-up, facing a stern challenge.

The subdued, slightly curious pre-match scene owed everything to the sudden death of Rangers’ kit man of more than three decades, Jimmy Bell. Yet after the completion of a minute’s silence, everything suddenly felt normal again. Just as Bell would want it to be.

Leipzig used the earliest exchanges to suggest the carrying of a threat on the break, without posing any challenge to Allan McGregor in the Rangers goal. The hosts provided ruthlessness where the Germans could not, sending Ibrox into raptures when doing so.

Glen Kamara started the attack that restored aggregate parity, with the midfielder freeing Ryan