Rangers v Feyenoord facts

Through to the UEFA Europa League group stage for the second successive season, Rangers kick off their Group G campaign in Glasgow with an intriguing fixture against Dutch giants Feyenoord.

Previous meetings
• The clubs have been paired together just once before and it proved portentous for Feyenoord, who drew 1-1 at Ibrox and won 3-2 in Rotterdam in the fourth round of the 2001/02 UEFA Cup – a competition they went on to win.

• Rangers' record against Dutch clubs is W5 D4 L7. They have failed to score in eight of those 16 games, including the last three, most recently going down 0-1 at home to PSV in the 2010/11 UEFA Europa League round of 16 after a goalless first leg in Eindhoven.

• Feyenoord have won all four of their UEFA home games against Scottish visitors but have a W1 D1 L1 record in Scotland. Their most famous victory against Scottish opposition came in the first such encounter, the 1970 European Champion Clubs' Cup final against Celtic, which they won 2-1 after extra time in Milan.

Form guide
Rangers
• Rangers qualified for 2019/20 European competition as runners-up to Celtic in last season's Scottish Premiership. They also won four qualifying ties to reach the UEFA Europa League group stage for the first time, but just one win and six points prevented them from making further progress.

• Once again Rangers have come through four qualifiers to reach this season's group stage, defeating St Joseph's, Progrès Niederkorn, Midtjylland and, in the play-offs, Legia Warszawa, a late Alfredo Morelos winner in the second leg at Ibrox the only goal of the tie.

• Rangers are undefeated in 13 home European matches, winning nine of them including all four this season. They have conceded just five goals in those 13 matches and no visiting team has scored more than once in any of the Gers' last 19 UEFA competition encounters in Glasgow, stretching back to the 2009/10 UEFA Champions League group stage.

Feyenoord
• Dutch champions in 2016/17 and cup winners in 2017/18, Feyenoord won no trophies last season but finished third in the league to return to the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round, where they were surprisingly eliminated last season by Slovakian side Trenčín 5-1 on aggregate (0-4 a, 1-1 h).

• This season they reversed those scorelines (4-0 h, 1-1 a) to overcome Dinamo Tbilisi before seeing off Hapoel Beer Sheva in style in the play-offs with a pair of 3-0 victories. This is the club's third appearance in the UEFA Europa League group stage. They topped their section in 2014/15 but finished third in 2016/17 despite opening with a 1-0 home win against eventual winners Manchester United.

• The 3-0 success in Israel last time out ended Feyenoord's run of nine European away games without a win (D3 L6). They have still won just two of their last 21 on the road (D4 L15), the other a 3-0 victory at Standard Liège in the 2014/15 UEFA Europa League.

Links and trivia 
• Rangers' Filip Helander and Feyenoord's Sam Larsson are Sweden internationals.

• Morelos was the top scorer in this season's UEFA Europa League qualifying phase with eight goals.

• Rangers are one of only two clubs to have reached this group stage after beginning their UEFA Europa League journey in the first qualifying round, Malmö being the other.

• Rangers manager Steven Gerrard and his Feyenoord counterpart Jaap Stam were rivals in the English Premier League from 1998 to 2001 with Liverpool and Manchester United respectively.

The coaches
• A Liverpool legend with 186 goals in 710 appearances for the Anfield club, most of them as captain, Gerrard launched his managerial career at Glasgow giants Rangers in May 2018. An England international for 14 years, accumulating 114 caps and 21 goals, the dynamic midfielder won the UEFA Cup and UEFA Champions League with Liverpool as well as both domestic cups. After an 18-month end-of-career spell with LA Galaxy he returned to coach Liverpool's youth team before the job at Ibrox lured him to Scotland, where he led the Gers to second place in the 2018/19 Premiership.

• Stam replaced his former Netherlands national team-mate Giovanni van Bronckhorst as Feyenoord's head coach in the summer of 2019 after spending the second half of the previous season in charge of PEC Zwolle following a spell in England with Reading. A towering centre-back, he made his name at PSV Eindhoven before going on to star for Alex Ferguson's Manchester United side, winning the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League in his debut season. He later played in Italy for Lazio and Milan before concluding his career at Ajax.