Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Rangers sacking – the inside story
Rachel Young 
Just six weeks separated Rangers’ two trips to the Iberian peninsula this year, but the change in mood between them could hardly have been greater.
In May, Rangers arrived in Seville, the hottest city in Europe, as a team ablaze. They had triumphed over the odds to reach the Europa League final, and stood just one game away from winning just the club’s second ever European trophy.
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At the heart of it all was Giovanni van Bronckhorst, looking every inch a manager ready to seize his shot at immortality. Ultimately, he fell agonisingly short, beaten in a penalty shootout by Eintracht Frankfurt, but at least winning the Scottish Cup final a week later to end an 11-year wait for a domestic cup kept supporters’ spirits high going into the summer.
It was another trip to the south western tip of Europe, however — a pre-season tour of the Portuguese Algarve — that brought signs of challenges to come for the Van Bronckhorst regime, ones that have contributed towards his sacking on Monday.
Various sources confirmed to The Athletic that there was a disagreement on the final day of that Algarve trip between the Dutchman and a group of senior players after they consumed more alcohol than permitted in the team hotel.
It was not the sort of major row that caused lasting damage, but people close to the players doubted whether disobedience would have occurred under Van Bronckhorst’s predecessor Steven Gerrard.
It can hardly be argued that Van Bronckhorst is a soft touch. You do not win over a century of caps for the Netherlands, the Champions League with Barcelona and the Premier League with Arsenal, or play with some of the greatest players and biggest personalities in the game, and not have inner steel or a fiery side.
Van Bronckhorst saw how compatriot and chief-disciplinarian Dick Advocaat operated at Rangers and how ruthless and unsparing he could be when a player stepped out of line. There was evidence that he could be ruthless, too, in the way he handled Alfredo Morelos.
The Colombia striker got on the wrong side of Gerrard numerous times for his indiscipline and lifestyle but for the first three months under Van Bronckhorst last winter he was said to be the happiest and most integrated he had been since arriving in Glasgow in the summer of 2017, which was attributed to the fact he had a manager, and an assistant coach in Roy Makaay, who spoke Spanish.
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Morelos scored 10 goals in his first 13 games under Van Bronckhorst but, after going down a couple of times before the international break in March, he missed the rest of last season with a thigh injury that required surgery.
His comeback was a disaster — sent off against Hibernian and then left out of the squad for the trip to face PSV Eindhoven in the second leg of a Champions League qualification play-off. Van Bronckhorst said it had been “building for a while” due to the player’s behaviour, and The Athletic revealed that he was late for the recovery session on August 14, two days before the PSV first leg.
It was a bold step but overall morale in the camp was not an issue then, as Rangers produced a sophisticated display in the Netherlands to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in 12 years.
In many ways, by coming through those two rounds of qualifying, Van Bronckhorst raised expectations to an impossibly high level. Rangers then endured a horrific Champions League campaign against Liverpool, Napoli and Ajax, losing every game, scoring just twice and recording the worst group-stage performance in the competition’s history by finishing with a goal difference of minus-20.
A 4-0 derby loss to Celtic in September started what was a demoralising final 10 weeks in charge for Van Bronckhorst. Rangers won just seven of his last 17 games as an injury crisis and repeated European drubbings killed their momentum.
The squad had not expected to struggle as much as they did in the Champions League and the crushing nature of those European defeats affected them physically and mentally, resulting in an atmosphere that was very negative. That is tough to endure at any club, but especially at Rangers, where winning is expected as a matter of course.
Rangers racked up 27 games before the winter break, a mammoth schedule given the club had more than 10 players out injured by the time they travelled to St Mirren on November 12 for the final fixture before the current World Cup break.
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Player fitness and the work done at the training ground during the week is one of the aspects that came under scrutiny.
Two players returned from the off-season behind on their fitness and were given individual programmes to get to the right level to be part of the group.
Pre-season saw Rangers incorporate the same five x three-minute runs that were a staple of Gerrard’s camps, but otherwise it was deemed to be a considerably lighter workload. One player even shared with a competitor that he felt slightly undercooked compared to where he would expect to be once the season had started.
Rangers midfielder Scott Arfield spoke publicly about the difference in approach between Van Bronckhorst and British managers he has worked with.
“We’ve got a European coach here now and predominantly it’s all about the ball — being football fit,” he said. “With British coaches, like Yogi (John Hughes) or (Sean) Dyche (at Burnley), he had a day where it was all about running and trying to break you mentally, which I loved,” he said.
“If I become a manager, I’ll definitely put that into my style, because you see a different side to the players when you put demands on them to run and to see if you can break them, because it’s a long season.”
Training during the season usually started at 11am and would not consist of many double sessions, part of which was due to the heavy fixture schedule limiting the number of first-team players available. Nevertheless, some players found the sessions to be slower and less intense, with the content more focused on tactical messaging than the British staple of small-sided games.
Rangers’ endurance was a major part of their success last season but that base fitness was put in place during the summer by Gerrard’s regime. It is understood that the running numbers being posted by the players did not show a decline but injuries reached a peak in recent weeks and that did not help Van Bronckhorst’s cause.
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Far too many of the squad were not contributing, including Morelos — one of its biggest earners. The manager sought to rehabilitate him quicker than expected after bombing him out in August but it did not work as he was unable to displace Antonio Colak, who has scored 14 goals since signing from Greek side PAOK in July.
When Morelos has been on the field, he has looked off the pace or frustrated over his more-peripheral role.
Recruitment was the other cause behind Van Bronckhorst’s struggles.
It is not the case that he did not have any say in which players came into Ibrox, rather that he had the final say once the scouting process had delivered the shortlist of names to him for a specific position.
He added seven players during almost exactly one year in charge but only Colak and Malik Tillman were able to cement themselves as starters, with the others not able to play regularly due to injuries or struggles with form. Rangers’ relative lack of firepower compared to Celtic can be seen in the numbers delivered by their forward players.
In his second season managing Dutch club Feyenoord, 2016-17, Van Bronckhorst requested that all summer signings be made before the squad reported for pre-season training as he wanted as much time as possible to integrate them and get across his messages.
For his first pre-season as Rangers boss, the squad returned to training at the end of June and Colak did not become his first signing until July 7, although the club did act quickly to add another five players over the next 18 days after banking money for Calvin Bassey and Joe Aribo being signed by Ajax and Southampton respectively.
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It was the only prolonged period of time he had to coach his team in his full tenure.
Ceri Bowley, who joined from Manchester City-led City Football Group after working closely with Van Bronckhorst for six months there, helped influence the framework of the coaching methodology but his arrival took months after having to work his notice period.
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A clear structure was put in place at the start of the season but, over time, this appeared to become diluted. Van Bronckhorst seemed like the man who knew how to strike the right balance in most scenarios, but going to Celtic Park seemed to haunt his team.
In February, Rangers were routed 3-0 there in a game so one-sided it was reminiscent of the years when they travelled across town expecting to be a punchbag. Gerrard had banished that fear factor during his three seasons but when they then lost 4-0 at Celtic in September — a scoreline that included two goalkeeper errors and two quick dead-ball situations — that style of build-up appeared less prominent.
The lack of incision and variety in the final third became a big issue in Van Bronckhorst’s final games in charge and it did not seem to be improving, bar a one-off win against Aberdeen.
He did a lot of video sessions and analysis work, consistent with his time at Feyenoord. He was a stickler for details and discipline, which is why at Feyenoord he would be personally phoning the boss of the club’s data partner to ask where the post-match analysis was the next morning if it hadn’t been sent exactly on the minute it was meant to be.
Van Bronckhorst made a lot of changes from game to game and the amount of analysis increased considerably, including going over the previous match and combing through his own team’s style rather than focusing mainly on the opposition.
Van Bronckhorst leaves having lost the lead in the Premiership last season and having fallen too far behind in this one already after just 15 games to mount a credible challenge to Celtic.
He gave Rangers fans one of the most thrilling rides imaginable on the way to Seville last season but he never managed to crack it domestically and get the club to a place where they could win the league.
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It was in stark contrast to his achievements with Feyenoord six seasons ago.
Then, as the pressure was mounting on his team, who needed a win on the final day to end their 18-year wait for a title, he gave his squad two days off. When they came back, instead of training, he arranged a boat trip and a nice dinner. As the manager, he wanted to show them that he knew the strain they were living under that week, and this act helped give the team the confidence to go out and play their natural game.
Should he have been given more time at Rangers? Is the failure of this season down to recruitment more than coaching? Is the core of this squad, looking likely to only win a single league title in five years, in need of a refresh?
These are the questions that will dominate the post-mortem but Van Bronckhorst’s year in charge featured a rollercoaster of emotions that made his tenure feel more like a full parliamentary term.
Van Bronckhorst believed he could improve in the second half of the season with a stronger squad and that, with more time, he could build a team to become champions. He’d had meetings with members of the board since that 1-1 draw with St Mirren 10 days ago, but it became clear over the weekend that he was going to be relieved of his duties.
Rangers will need to pay a compensation package to get rid of him and his coaching staff, with two and a half years remaining on their contracts.
He leaves Ibrox amicably but there is a sense from his end that, after being tasked with helping to build an international brand by reaching the Europa League final, developing Bassey into a record sale and guiding the club back to the Champions League, he became a victim of his own success.
He was not a footballing philosophy or a personality. He was a technocratic coach who believed in adapting and that winning, regardless of style, equalled success.
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There were undoubted triumphs. He harnessed a team that seemed to have hit a ceiling at the last-16 stage of the Europa League under Gerrard and somehow conjured a belief and aggressive style of football that saw better teams with far bigger budgets blown away.
He took a raw jumble of attributes in Bassey, identified his best position and blended them to make a freakish £25million centre-back.
He defied the poor record of Gerrard in the knockout competitions by beating Hearts in the Scottish Cup final, and eclipsed his predecessor by overcoming Royale Union Saint-Gilloise and PSV in play-off ties to end Rangers’ 12-year absence from the Champions League proper.
But his sacking proves that these achievements are all negligible if the league title goes to Celtic Park, which is why an uninspiring 1-1 away to St Mirren — where he was forced to throw on 18-year-old striker Robbie Ure and saw him end up in a disagreement with Glen Kamara at full-time — brought down the curtain on his 368-day reign.
The DJ at SMISA Stadium was not to know at the time, but there was something fitting about playing Que Sera, Sera over the PA at the final whistle that day.
Van Bronckhorst would have identified with that kind of fatalism.
(Top photo: Carlo Hermann/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
