Rangers

Rangers, in full Rangers Football Club, also called Rangers FC, bynames the Gers and the Light Blues, Scottish professional football (soccer) club based in Glasgow. The club is the most successful team in the world in terms of domestic league championships won, with more than 50. It is known for its fierce rivalry with its Glaswegian neighbour, Celtic.

The club was founded in 1872 and plays in white shorts and blue shirts (though blue-and-white striped shirts were worn in the early 1880s), which accounts for its nickname “the Light Blues.” For the first 25 years of the club’s existence, Rangers played in a variety of locations around Glasgow before funds were raised to build Ibrox Stadium, which opened in 1899. There have been two major stadium tragedies at Ibrox, the first coming in 1902 when a wooden stand collapsed, causing 25 deaths and more than 500 injuries. The second, in 1971, saw 66 people die and more than 140 injured when stairway barriers collapsed as fans were exiting the stadium.

Between 1899 and 1954 the club was managed by just two men, William Wilton and Bill Struth. Under Struth, who led the team for 34 seasons, Rangers won 18 league championships as well as 10 Scottish Cups. Rangers’ 54 total Scottish league championships—including one shared with Dumbarton FC in 1891—is more than any other team. The club has also won the Scottish Cup 33 times overall. Despite great success domestically, the club has done less well abroad, with the 1972 European Cup Winners’ Cup title its only notable international championship.

Rangers first played Celtic in 1888, and games between the two teams (collectively known as the “Old Firm”) are fiercely contested matches, which sometimes cross over into fan violence. The intense rivalry between the fans of the two clubs is often sectarian in nature, with Rangers historically perceived as a Protestant team and Celtic drawing its fans from Glasgow’s Catholic Irish immigrant community.

The Old Firm rivalry came to an abrupt end in 2012 when the Rangers franchise was liquidated. The move came after Rangers was found to be insolvent following years of financial mismanagement and a tax-evasion investigation by British authorities. The club was soon re-formed, but it had to start its new incarnation in the lowest division of Scottish football. (In 2014 a British court ruled that the presumed initial tax transgression by the club’s past owners was indeed legal, effectively making the liquidation of Rangers unnecessary.) The club quickly worked its way back up the football hierarchy, rejoining the Scottish Premiership for the 2016–17 season. In May 2018, Rangers made a splash by bringing on legendary Liverpool FC player Steven Gerrard as manager.