Carlos Carvalhal, the Braga manager, has said his players do not fear their trip to a raucous Ibrox tomorrow as they look to defend a slender one-goal lead.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst has called for the packed Ibrox crowd to be at their most passionate to inspire his side as they seek to turn around the first leg deficit. His side are unbeaten at home in the knockout stages of this season’s Europa League having drawn with Borussia Dortmund and thrashed Red Star Belgrade on their path to the quarter-finals.
But Carvalhal, whose side have lost just once in their last 11 matches, said: “These boys are growing since the beginning of the season. Most of them have [played] 15 games, 20 games, they have more experience.
“Some of them in the youth team at national level, they have this type of profile but we will [show] personality, I am absolutely sure, we will play with personality and we will play without any kind of fear.
“But we know it will be difficult, this we are sure about. But afraid, no. We will turn the environment, try to be positive to us, like a motivation and try to make good opportunities because we understand these kind of games are not a threat but an opportunity.
“This is an opportunity and we don’t have too many opportunities to do this kind of game, during the season we have two or three games like that.”
Carvalhal predicted a more open game than the first leg, which finished 1-0 to the hosts after an Abel Ruiz strike. “I believe that we will also try to find spaces to create more chances than the first leg,” he said. “If Rangers will create more chances, we can also create more chances in a game like that. Everything is open, 50/50, let’s see.”
Carvalhal was appointed Braga manager in the summer of 2020 and warned Rangers that they have won at other intimidating arenas under his stewardship.
“It is something with a big motivation,” he said. “We like the fantastic environment. Since we arrived in Braga, we have won in Benfica’s stadium, Sporting’s [Lisbon] stadium, Porto’s stadium, we are talking about 60,000 fans or 50,000 fans and we won there. So it is something that we like.
“We will not defend nothing when we go to Glasgow, we are a team that plays all the time to try to win with a big respect to Rangers because it is really a very good team, a strong team but we will try to win because we try to win all the games.
“We want to enjoy the game but at the same time we are not joking of course, we play serious to win.
“But even before the first game I told the players that they must enjoy this part of the competition, they must enjoy these games, if you have the opportunity to do this, let’s do the maximum, let’s give our best creativity and intensity but enjoy the game. We like the ball, we like to play, we try to be a threat all the time to the opponents. We did enough to score one goal. We reacted very well in the transitions because Rangers are very strong in the offensive transitions but we didn’t concede too many opportunities.”
Asked if his side’s failure to add to their scoreline was disappointing, Carvalhal added: “In the second half Rangers respected us more. They tried to push us, to put long balls for the speed of the players but we acted very well. It was more difficult to create chances but at the same time it was more difficult also for Rangers to create chances.”
