Rangers Watch It All Slipping Away As Celtic Score Late To Take A Crucial Step Towards Sealing The Comeback Of 2008.
Wednesday 16 April 2008 was one of those nights that will never leave my memory.
Celtic needed a win about as much as we ever have; Rangers were reeling in their bid to secure the SPL title, and a race in which we’d looked out of it had come suddenly to life and we could see a fantastic opportunity opening up in front of us.
But in order to pull off the miracle, the comeback, we pretty much had to win every game. Walter Smith’s team had games in hand, and so pressure was everything. We needed to keep it on, and on that night we knew a victory would put us within a single point of the prize, and with another game against them looming it was vital to do it.
That night at Celtic Park haunts them even today. It was a storming occasion, and one that very nearly slipped away from us in spite of the finest goal I’ve ever seen scored in a Celtic – Rangers match, and I say that as a huge Larsson fan who considers his two chipped goals against Stefan Klos, the one in the league and the other at Hampden in a League Cup semi final, to have been the work of a truly masterful footballer at the height of his powers.
But Nakamura’s goal that night eclipses them both.
How many times have I watched the highlights of this one?
A hundred or more, I’m sure, and it never gets old.
Because that first goal was just so magnificent, that bending, swerving, 40 yard thing of beauty that no goalkeeper on Earth would have got near to and which, had it been scored in El Classico, would have been replayed endlessly for all eternity, and the second so unexpected and vital and crushing to their hopes that I can imagine that it replays in an endless loop in the nightmares of some of their fans even now, eight years after the fact.
Yet that match almost ended in heartache. Rangers had equalised through El Rat and then, in 70 minutes, Naka took the ball on the turn outside the box and rattled it towards the top corner. The Rangers keeper, McGregor, was beaten all ends up. Carlos Cueller, standing on the goal-line, leapt for it and palmed it away. Penalty, red card, game, set and match Celtic, right?
Wrong. Scott McDonald stepped up … and the keeper saved it.
That’s how it looked like it would stay as we headed into injury time. When I think of what happened next I always see it in slow motion, as I’m sure some of their fans and players do.
Celtic got a throw in on the left hand side. Mark Wilson took it, caught the lay-off and swept a high ball towards the penalty box. Samaras, with his back to goal, headed it down into the path of Gary Caldwell. He spotted Scott McDonald making a run, and hit a long pass in his direction. It was such a sweet ball, and McDonald glanced it across goal with his head. Jan Vennegoor was waiting on the edge of the box, and he headed it past Neil Alexander, who had come on for McGregor just six minutes after he’d saved the penalty.
Celtic Park erupted with joy. On the pitch, Rangers’ players, who knew even then that a title they’d had in their hands was slipping through their fingers, exploded with a different emotion. When the dust settled, Caldwell and Weir had been sent off for a punch-up and Ferguson should have considered himself lucky not to join them.
None of that mattered to the fans; it was a stonking end to a high tension night, and one that shattered the confidence of the men in blue.
