2008 UEFA Cup Final

2008 UEFA Cup Final

Artwork commemorating the final by Mancunian artist Liam Spencer
Event	2007–08 UEFA Cup
Zenit St. Petersburg Rangers 2 0
Date	14 May 2008
Venue	City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester
Man of the Match	Andrei Arshavin (Zenit)
Referee	Peter Fröjdfeldt (Sweden)
Attendance	43,878
Weather	Sunny 16°C 43% humidity
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The 2008 UEFA Cup Final was the 37th final of the UEFA Cup, UEFA's second tier club football tournament. The match was played at the City of Manchester Stadium, home ground of Manchester City F.C., in Manchester, England,^[1] at 20:45 CEST (19:45 local time) on 14 May 2008.

The match was contested by Zenit St. Petersburg of Russia and Rangers of Scotland. It was billed as a battle of Rangers managerial staff, with ex-boss Dick Advocaat, currently the manager of Zenit, pitted against current boss Walter Smith, who has had two stints as manager of Rangers, with both completing the Scottish domestic treble; Smith in 1993, Advocaat in 1999.

Zenit won the match 2–0, with goals coming from Igor Denisov and Konstantin Zyryanov, to win Zenit their first UEFA Cup title, and make them only the second Russian side to win the competition, after CSKA Moscow in 2004–05.

The logo of the final shows a picture of the City of Manchester Stadium, created by English artist Liam Spencer. It was unveiled at a ceremony in the stadium on December 6.^[2]

Route to the final

Zenit St. Petersburg				Rangers
UEFA Cup			Round	Champions League
Opponent	Result	Legs	Qualifying phase	Opponent	Result	Legs
Zlaté Moravce	5–0	2–0 away; 3–0 home	Second qualifying round	Zeta	3–0	2–0 home; 1–0 away
Standard Liège	4–1	3–0 home; 1–1 away	Third qualifying round	Red Star Belgrade	1–0	1–0 home; 0–0 away
Main article: UEFA Cup 2007–08 group stage: Group A Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Everton 4 4 0 0 9 3 +6 12 Nuremberg 4 2 1 1 7 6 +1 7 Zenit St. Petersburg 4 1 2 1 6 6 0 5 AZ 4 1 1 2 5 6 −1 4 Larissa 4 0 0 4 4 10 −6 0			Group stage	Main article: UEFA Champions League 2007–08 group stage: Group E Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Barcelona 6 4 2 0 12 3 +9 14 Lyon 6 3 1 2 11 10 +1 10 Rangers 6 2 1 3 7 9 −2 7 Stuttgart 6 1 0 5 7 15 −8 3
UEFA Cup
Opponent	Result	Legs	Final phase	Opponent	Result	Legs
Villarreal	2–2 (a)	1–0 home; 1–2 away	Round of 32	Panathinaikos	1–1 (a)	0–0 home; 1–1 away
Marseille	3–3 (a)	1–3 away; 2–0 home	Round of 16	Werder Bremen	2–1	2–0 home; 0–1 away
Bayer Leverkusen	4–2	4–1 away; 0–1 home	Quarter-finals	Sporting CP	2–0	0–0 home; 2–0 away
Bayern Munich	5–1	1–1 away; 4–0 home	Semi-finals	Fiorentina	0–0 (4–2p)	0–0 home; 0–0 away (aet)

Throughout the season in Europe, Rangers had developed a reputation for being involved in tight games, principally due to their disciplined, defensive tactics which nullified opponents - only scoring 12 goals and also conceding 12 goals in their 18 matches in the two competitions. This approach intensified after dropping into the UEFA Cup, with none of their matches involving more than 2 goals; there were four 0-0 draws amongst the 8 matches. This cautious tactical approach drew both criticism (for the largely unexciting and unattractive football which resulted from the tactics) and praise (for successfully limiting the opportunities created by their opponents, all of whom were considered to have more skilful, dangerous players than Rangers).

Zenit were considered by the clubs of Western Europe to be a more unpredictable opponent (although not an nknown quantity, as they had reached the quarterfinals of the 2005-06 UEFA Cup and had won the 2007 Russian Premier League). In contrast to their opponents in the final, they scored 28 and conceded 15 in their 16 UEFA Cup games, which included impressive wins over Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich by large margins but also defeats by Everton, Villarreal and Marseille which had seen them close to elimination.

Pre-match

UEFA Cup on display at Manchester Town Hall

Zenit and Michel Platini asked the British government to ease visa procedures for Russian fans, despite Russia having cancelled visas for British fans travelling to 2008 UEFA Champions League Final in Moscow. However, the Director for British Visa Services for the CIS, Mandy Ivemy, said that "for the U.K. government, visas and biometric checks are a vital part of immigration policy, and we are not prepared to waive them".^[3]

Meanwhile, there was a mass flow of Rangers fans into Manchester. Over a hundred thousand supporters 'invaded' the city despite the club's official ticket allocation being just 13,000 and police requests for fans to stay at home. The influx of people resulted in there being no vacant hotel rooms in a twenty mile radius of the city and the total amount of money that was ploughed into the local economy was estimated to be around £25 million.^[4]

Rangers' home ground, Ibrox, was opened to show a live beamback of the match to approximately 30,000 spectators. Fans queued overnight for a seat in the stadium, and the capacity was reached more than two hours before kick-off.^{[citation needed]}

Match

Team news

Zenit St. Petersburg were without the competition's top scorer, Pavel Pogrebnyak, who had picked up two bookings in the knockout stages of the tournament and was therefore suspended.^[5] However, they were able to call upon their other star names such as attacking midfielders Andrei Arshavin and Konstantin Zyryanov, as well as holding midfielder Anatoliy Tymoschuk.

Rangers manager Walter Smith started with Jean-Claude Darcheville on his own up-front, with a five man midfield supporting him comprising Steven Davis, Kevin Thomson, Steven Whittaker, Barry Ferguson and Brahim Hemdani. Neil Alexander was making only his tenth start in goal for Rangers, first choice keeper Allan McGregor was injured.

Match summary

Match details

14 May 2008 20:45 CEST	Zenit St. Petersburg	2–0	Rangers	City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester Attendance: 43,878 Referee: Peter Fröjdfeldt (Sweden)
	Denisov  72' Zyryanov  90+4'	Report

Zenit St. Petersburg

Rangers

GK 16 Vyacheslav Malafeev 90+2' RB 22 Aleksandr Anyukov CB 4 Ivica Križanac CB 15 Roman Shirokov LB 11 Radek Šírl DM 44 Anatoliy Tymoschuk (c) RM 18 Konstantin Zyryanov LM 27 Igor Denisov 72' RW 20 Viktor Fayzulin 90+3' LW 10 Andrei Arshavin CF 9 Fatih Tekke Substitutes: GK 1 Kamil Čontofalský DF 5 Kim Dong-Jin 90+3' MF 2 Vladislav Radimov MF 25 Fernando Ricksen MF 57 Aleksei Ionov MF 88 Olexandr Gorshkov FW 7 Alejandro Domínguez Manager: Dick Advocaat

GK 13 Neil Alexander RB 21 Kirk Broadfoot 90+4' CB 3 David Weir CB 24 Carlos Cuéllar LB 5 Saša Papac 77' DM 7 Brahim Hemdani 80' RM 28 Steven Whittaker 86' CM 6 Barry Ferguson (c) CM 8 Kevin Thomson LM 35 Steven Davis CF 19 Jean-Claude Darcheville Substitutes: GK 16 Graeme Smith DF 30 Christian Dailly MF 11 Charlie Adam MF 39 Amdy Faye FW 9 Kris Boyd 86' FW 10 Nacho Novo 77' FW 27 Lee McCulloch 80' Manager: Walter Smith

Match statistics

• Source: UEFA Full Time Report

Fan violence

Police split Zenit and Rangers fans

At the stadium, fans from both sides, enjoying the warm summer weather, enjoyed a festival atmosphere, with no incidents of note.

However the event was marred by Rangers supporters rioting in Manchester city centre; these riots started after a big screen that was due to show the match had failed. BBC News 24 interrupted normal programming to broadcast the riots live on television^{[citation needed]} and ITN's flagship News at Ten programme gave extensive coverage to the riots.^{[7][8][9][10]}

A Zenit fan was also attacked and stabbed.^[11] Eleven people were convicted of rioting and given prison sentences varying from six months to three-and-a-half years in September 2010.^[12]

See also

• 2007–08 UEFA Cup
• 2007 UEFA Intertoto Cup
• 2008 UEFA Champions League Final

References

External links

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