Tom English: Awkward squad in it to win

Hard to believe it but Prandelli was serious. Have to score a goal? Says who? Did he know nothing of the terrible beauty of Rangers' progression through this UEFA Cup and the unashamed tactics that are driving it? Anti-football. Got a problem? Tough.

Walter Smith makes no great claims about his team, even though the Quad is now staring them in the face. He doesn't pretend they are easy on the eye and doesn't get upset (not much) about the flak that has come their way from disgruntled foreigners who see their stalling, their negativity, as an affront to the game. Italians are saying this. With straight faces, no less.

The Rangers manager uses certain, well chosen, words to describe his team. Look up resilience in a thesaurus and you will find them all there. Their durability is not something that will win over the heart of a neutral. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is not even something that will automatically guarantee them a place in the pantheon of great Scottish teams in Europe should they beat Zenit St Petersburg in the final. Loved only by their own, they are a unique band of men. Tough and honest. Admirable.

You may not be stirred by them (unless blue is your colour) but you have to respect them. Perhaps be in awe of them. Three penalty shoot-outs this season and three victories. A calamity at home to Lyon in the Champions League followed by a run of 20 games unbeaten in all competitions. Eight UEFA Cup games and only two goals conceded. Eighteen European games in all and 12 clean sheets. The hammer blow of injuries and suspensions, lost points to Dundee United and a pair of defeats to Celtic responded to on Thursday night with a progression to a European final. Only a side forged from steel could achieve all of this.

"The physical side is part of it but the main part is the mental aspect," says Smith. "The levels of concentration players have to put in during these games is enormous. We don't have a level of economy in our play so we've got to be flat out to achieve what we have. They have done that well over the season.

"They had a big disappointment against Lyon at home and managed to get over that. The one thing that's come through for the majority of the season is that they've shown a really good attitude. That means handling tough situations. We had a long run of games undefeated and then we lose two at Celtic Park. We handled that again. I just feel that getting to the final can ease any physical and mental problems they're feeling. That's a thing that keeps you going. They've worked extremely hard to get where they are."

From the first whistle on Thursday night, the ambition of the Ibrox club was to survive and frustrate and they did it expertly. That was their beginning, their end, their in-between. Their only thought was for the bottom line. Make the final. Do what needed to be done and never mind the begrudgers.

Prandelli wanted an open game of football, Smith wanted victory. For Rangers, these were not compatible. Lemmings at the cliff-side they are not. Taking Fiorentina on in an exhibition was never what they were going to be about. Smith didn't want to test the Italian's ability as much as try their patience. They'd done it before and it had worked. Panathinaikos couldn't handle the radiation treatment, nor could Werder Bremen or Sporting Lisbon. All burned by its intensity. In 23 home games this season Sporting have been held goalless only twice, once by Manchester United and once by Rangers. Now Fiorentina have gone the same way. They've played 25 games in Serie A and the UEFA Cup in their own ground and have gone without a goal just three times, when they played Inter Milan, AC Milan and, yes, Rangers.

And in the aftermath of Thursday night, in the cold reality of defeat, there was no great awakening from Prandelli. "I'm very disappointed," he said. "Fiorentina played better than Rangers and we deserved to go to the final. We didn't have any luck. We put a lot of crosses into the box and played well, but we needed that bit of luck that just didn't come."

Luck? Let's see. They were playing against a side that had won just two of their last eight games, that had suffered badly through injury, that were brought together in the first place through a series of Bosmans and loan deals and, with the odd exception, small money transfers. Their ageing centre-back was part-injured, their replacement centre-forward was part-stupid and they were on their second choice goalkeeper, a man who had spent months kicking his heels on the ben ch before getting his chance.

"Neil Alexander's been idle since January," says Smith. "Not only has he been sitting and waiting for his chance but when he came into the team there was a bit of disruption in our central defensive partnership for the first time in a wee while. The two big games against Celtic were hard for him but he's handled it very well so far. Rather like a lot of the other boys plucked from rather obscure backgrounds he's obviously thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to play on a top European stage."

These are strange times for Alexander. Everybody's talking about history and trophies and there he is, a Rangers man with seven games under his belt, a hero so it is said, yet he has just one normal time victory to his name.

Then again. Normal? It's not a word that's in keeping with what Rangers have been up to these past months.

Against their visitors the other night, Fiorentina should have been able to make their own luck. They didn't. Carlos Cuellar, the imperious centre-half, was asked about the Italians on Friday. "Maybe they were better than us," he said, "but that's life. Not always the best team wins. It doesn't matter what people say. We are there on merit."

WAS IT wishful thinking or blind stupidity that sparked Cesare Prandelli's thought process after the drab goalless draw at Ibrox just over a week ago? Prandelli, the manager of Fiorentina, was asked how Rangers might approach the decisive game at the Stadio Artemio Franchi and came up with a remark which, if said in jest would have been understandable, only he wasn't smiling at the time. Given that Rangers had spent 90 minutes defending their own line in their own stadium, Prandelli might have been entitled to crack a joke or make an attempt at irony or sarcasm at their expense. "I'm convinced they won't play the same way as they did in the first leg," he said, deadpan. "They will play higher up the pitch because this time they have to score a goal."

The wider community of European football, no doubt, wouldn't agree with that. But what is Smith to do? He knows his team's style of play is not pretty. He also knows that in these relatively early stages of the redevelopment of his team, it has to be this way. It's not attractive but it's effective. That's the mantra. The Italians, above all, should understand the concept. Their greatness at club and international level has been founded on the back of a Smith-like philosophy. They are the originals of the species. They had the players to do it the other way, in a riot of glorious football, but more often than not through history they opted not to.

So when Fiorentina talk about the rights and wrongs of Thursday night, about justice and all the rest they should take a look at themselves as a nation. Smith has never made any secret of his love of Italian football. Where do you suppose the first principles of cattenacio came from?

"A lot of the reaction (from Fiorentina) is disappointment," says Smith. "One player (Mario Santana) I read last week said that a team from Serie A just couldn't lose to a team from the Scottish league.

"A lot of the teams we have played this season have probably thought the same thing. Werder Bremen, for instance, must be scratching their heads as to how they didn't win the game against us because they put us under far more pressure than Fiorentina did in terms of creation of opportunities and pressure.

"But it happens. We've shown in Scotland that our teams have got a resilience and that we're not going to be easily beaten, with Celtic getting to the last 16 of the Champions League the last two seasons, ourselves getting to the UEFA final and the national team surprising everybody by their results. Maybe the people who come out with these statements are not taking into account how Scottish football is doing at the present moment."

Rangers will carry on the way the are, apologising to nobody on their way to a place they could not have dreamed about reaching. Manchester, for goodness sake. Madchester more like.