RANGERS last night were on the verge of signing Paul Gascoigne, who
emerged from seven hours of talks in London which resolved his
compensation claim from Lazio, but when the Ibrox club looked up from
transfer business they discovered that they remain quite a distance from
their main goal, Champions' League football.
UEFA revealed their seedings list for next season's Champions' League
and the premier division champions were frozen out, while English
champions Blackburn Rovers were seeded sixth, even though they have no
European pedigree at all.
The rankings will be an extreme disappointment to the Ibrox side, who
failed to beat AEK Athens in last year's prelims, but who are still the
only British side to have actually played with the elite in the
Champions' League. Blackburn fell at the first hurdle of last season's
UEFA Cup competition -- they lost to part-time side Trelleborgs -- but
are favoured by a system based on the size of a club's potential
television viewing audience.
The more cynical have always known England's champions would be seeded
because they have a large TV audience -- the most potent factor in
modern day football.
Indeed, all of the top eight seeds, the new defending champions Ajax
apart, represent countries with large populations. The Dutch club are in
as defending champions followed by Juventus, Nantes, Werder Bremen or
Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Blackburn, Porto, and Spartak Moscow.
In the past clubs were able to take their own co-efficient -- points
earned through European appearances -- or that of their national
associations, depending on which was the higher. However, for next
season UEFA seem to be insisting that only the national co-efficients
will count, but any system which would have excluded Ajax had they not
beaten AC Milan in last night's European Cup final can only be regarded
as suspect.
Rangers can console themselves and galvanise their effort to win
through the August prelims and reach the Champions' League by completing
the signing of Gascoigne now that he has settled with Lazio. ''The
Gascoigne era with Lazio is over,'' said a spokesman for the Italian
club who have agreed a #4.5m fee with Rangers.
The 27-year-old is being pursued by Chelsea, Aston Villa, and Leeds
United, but Rangers chairman David Murray insisted yesterday that
Gascoigne would be signing for Rangers, and it seems he will do so
within a day or so after one or two more minor details have been
finalised.
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