Why Rangers boss Giovanni van Bronckhorst has joined list of Old Firm managerial icons

The journey may not yet be over but Giovanni van Bronckhorst has already entered territory which is very rarely breached by managers of Scottish clubs.

The scale of his achievement in guiding Rangers to the quarter-finals of the Europa League should not be underestimated.

It is only the fourth time in the last 34 years that the Ibrox club have advanced as far in a European competition. Van Bronckhorst joins Graeme Souness, who took Rangers to the European Cup quarter-finals in 1988, and Walter Smith who did it twice - reaching the last eight of the inaugural Champions League in 1993 and then again when leading Rangers to the UEFA Cup Final in 2008.

Until van Bronckhorst’s team completed their 4-2 aggregate win over Red Star Belgrade in Serbia on Thursday evening, that remarkable run of Smith’s squad to Manchester 14 years ago was the last time any Scottish side had a presence in the quarter-finals.

Indeed, since the turn of the century the only other manager to get there with a Scottish club was Martin O’Neill who did it in consecutive seasons with Celtic in the UEFA Cup in 2003 and 2004.

As Rangers supporters continue to dream of heading to Seville in May, the city where their Old Firm rivals reached the final under O’Neill in that 2002-03 campaign, van Bronckhorst is fuelling the ambitions of his players with his measured and tactically astute approach to the particular demands of European football.

His predecessor Steven Gerrard deserves enormous credit for restoring the continental credibility of a club who had been humiliatingly defeated by Luxembourg minnows Progres Niederkorn in the first qualifying round of the Europa League the season before the England captain took charge.

Gerrard guided Rangers to four