THE Uefa Cup final will be shown live on giant screens at Ibrox Stadium next week, as Rangers encourage fans without tickets not to travel to Manchester for the match.
Uefa have given permission for the Rangers v Zenit St Petersburg final to be beamed back to Ibrox, and Rangers will throw open the gates to thousands of fans. Martin Bain, Rangers' chief executive, said: "To reach the Uefa Cup final is a tremendous a
chievement for the club and everyone involved is looking forward to what is sure to be a great occasion next Wednesday.
"The final has already been billed as the 'friendly final' due to our close association with Dick Advocaat and a large contingent of the Rangers family will travel in good spirits to Manchester.
"We also want to make sure the thousands of other fans without tickets have the opportunity to experience the party atmosphere and that is why we are creating a celebration venue in Glasgow, Rangers' home city. Supporters and families will be able to turn up at the gates on the night, with entry free of charge."
Meanwhile, ticketless fans hoping to find a way into the match were dealt a fresh blow yesterday when Zenit St Petersburg claimed they would taking up their full allocation.
Mainly because of political reasons, there has been no tradition of Russian football fans travelling outside their country to follow their clubs. When Rangers beat Moscow Dynamo in the European Cup Winners' Cup final at the Nou Camp in 1972, there were only a handful of Dynamo supporters in the stadium.
Despite a relaxation in rules surrounding travel in and out of Russia in recent years, Advocaat feared there might only be around 5,000 Zenit fans making the journey to England.
Consequently, many Rangers supporters hoped that the St Petersburg club might send back part of their 13,000 allocation to be reissued.
However, a spokesman for Zenit said all their tickets will be snapped up. The spokesman said: "We will sell all our tickets, there is no doubt about that. We had 3,000 in Munich for the first leg of our semi-final against Bayern and many more want to go to Manchester.
"We have had our first allocation of 7,000 tickets from Uefa and they are gone. We are waiting for the second part of 4,000 and I have no doubt that they will be sold too, as will the rest we get. Our fans will have no problems travelling to Britain. They do need a special passport that allows them to leave the country, but many of our 16,000 season-ticket holders and our other fans already have it.
"They also need a visa to travel to Britain, but the British Consulate will open offices in St Petersburg and Moscow to allow those to be rushed through."
Zenit will be appearing in their first European final and it appears that the Russian club's fans are equally as keen to get to Manchester as their Ibrox counterparts. The spokesman continued: "Some of our fans will be flying from St Petersburg to Riga, then to Manchester. Others will be flying from St Petersburg to London then getting a train to Manchester.
"The average salary for our fans is around 500 (£390) per month and some of the air fares are 600 (£470) so it is an expensive trip, but we will have an enthusiastic support in Manchester."
The full article contains 586 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
