2008 UEFA Cup Final

2008 UEFA Cup Final

Event	2007–08 UEFA Cup
Zenit St. Petersburg Rangers 2 0
Date	14 May 2008
Venue	City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester
Man of the Match	Andrei Arshavin (Zenit)
Referee	Peter Fröjdfeldt (Sweden)
Attendance	43,878
Weather	Sunny 16°C 43% humidity
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The 2008 UEFA Cup Final was the 37th final of the UEFA Cup. It is UEFA's second-tier club football tournament. The match was played at the City of Manchester Stadium. It is the home stadium of Manchester City F.C., in Manchester, England,^[1] at 20:45 CEST (19:45 local time) on 14 May 2008.

The match was played by Zenit St. Petersburg of Russia and Rangers of Scotland. It was called a battle of Rangers coaching staff, with ex-boss Dick Advocaat, currently the manager of Zenit against current boss Walter Smith. Smith has had two times as manager of Rangers. Both coaches led the Rangers to the Scottish domestic treble; Smith in 1993 and Advocaat in 1999.

Zenit won the match 2–0. They had goals from Igor Denisov and Konstantin Zyryanov. It was their first UEFA Cup title. It made them only the second Russian side to win the competition, after CSKA Moscow in 2004–05.

The logo of the final shows a picture of the City of Manchester Stadium, created by English artist Liam Spencer. It was first shown at a ceremony in the stadium on December 6.^[2]

Zenit St. Petersburg			Rangers
Villarreal H 1 - ;0	Pogrebnyak 63'	Round of 32 First leg		Panathinaikos H 0 - 0
Villarreal A 1 - 2 Zenit St. Petersburg won on away goals	Pogrebnyak 31'	Second leg		Panathinaikos A 1 - 1 Rangers won on away goals	Novo 81'
Marseille A 1 - 3	Arshavin 82'	Round of 16 First leg		Werder Bremen H 2 - 0	Cousin 45' Davis 47'
Marseille H 2 - 0 Zenit St. Petersburg won on away goals	Pogrebnyak 39', 78'	Second leg		Werder Bremen A 0 - 1
Bayer Leverkusen A 4 - 1	Arshavin 20' Pogrebnyak 52' Anyukov 61' Denisov 64'	Quarter-finals First leg		Sporting CP H 0 - 0
Bayer Leverkusen H 0 - 1		Second leg		Sporting CP A 2 - 0	Darcheville 60' Whittaker 90+2'
Bayern Munich A 1 - 1	Lúcio 60' (o.g.)	Semi-finals First leg		Fiorentina H 0 - 0
Bayern Munich H 4 - 0	Pogrebnyak 4', 73' Zyryanov 39' Fayzulin 54'	Second leg		Fiorentina A 0 - 0 (a.e.t.) Rangers won 4 - 2 on penalties

Zenit and Michel Platini asked the British government to ease visa procedures for Russian fans, despite Russia having cancelled visas for British fans travelling to 2008 UEFA Champions League Final in Moscow. However, the Director for British Visa Services for the CIS, Mandy Ivemy, said that "for the U.K. government, visas and biometric checks are a vital part of immigration policy, and we are not prepared to waive them".^[3]

Meanwhile, there was a mass flow of Rangers fans into Manchester. Over a hundred thousand supporters 'invaded' the city despite the club's official ticket allocation being just 13,000 and police requests for fans to stay at home. The influx of people resulted in there being no vacant hotel rooms in a twenty-mile radius of the city and the total amount of money that was ploughed into the local economy was estimated to be around £25 million.^[4]

Rangers' home ground, Ibrox, was opened to show a live beamback of the match to approximately 30,000 spectators. Fans queued overnight for a seat in the stadium. The capacity was reached more than two hours before kick-off.^[5]

Zenit St. Petersburg were without the competition's top scorer, Pavel Pogrebnyak, who had picked up two bookings in the knockout stages of the tournament and was therefore suspended.^[6] However, they were able to call upon their other star names such as attacking midfielders Andrei Arshavin and Konstantin Zyryanov, as well as holding midfielder Anatoliy Tymoschuk.

Rangers manager Walter Smith started with Jean-Claude Darcheville on his own up-front, with a five-man midfield supporting him comprising Steven Davis, Kevin Thomson, Steven Whittaker, Barry Ferguson and Brahim Hemdani. Neil Alexander was making only his tenth start in goal for Rangers, first choice keeper Allan McGregor was injured.

14 May 2008

20:45 CEST

Zenit St. Petersburg	2 - 0	Rangers
Denisov  72' Zyryanov  90+4'	Report

City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester

Attendance: 43,878

Referee: Peter Fröjdfeldt (Sweden)

Zenit St. Petersburg

Rangers

ZENIT ST. PETERSBURG: GK 16 Vyacheslav Malafeev  90+2' RB 22 Aleksandr Anyukov CB 4 Ivica Križanac CB 15 Roman Shirokov LB 11 Radek Šírl DM 44 Anatoliy Tymoschuk (c) RM 18 Konstantin Zyryanov LM 27 Igor Denisov  72' RW 20 Viktor Fayzulin  90+3' LW 10 Andrei Arshavin CF 9 Fatih Tekke Substitutes: GK 1 Kamil Čontofalský DF 5 Kim Dong-Jin  90+3' MF 2 Vladislav Radimov MF 25 Fernando Ricksen MF 57 Aleksei Ionov MF 88 Olexandr Gorshkov FW 7 Alejandro Domínguez Manager: Dick Advocaat

RANGERS: GK 13 Neil Alexander RB 21 Kirk Broadfoot  90+4' CB 3 David Weir CB 24 Carlos Cuéllar LB 5 Saša Papac  77' DM 7 Brahim Hemdani  80' RM 28 Steven Whittaker  86' CM 6 Barry Ferguson (c) CM 8 Kevin Thomson LM 35 Steven Davis CF 19 Jean-Claude Darcheville Substitutes: GK 16 Graeme Smith DF 30 Christian Dailly MF 11 Charlie Adam MF 39 Amdy Faye FW 9 Kris Boyd  86' FW 10 Nacho Novo  77' FW 27 Lee McCulloch  80' Manager: Walter Smith

• UEFA Full Time Report

The event was marred by fans rioting in Manchester city centre; these riots started after a big screen that was due to show the match had failed. BBC News 24 interrupted normal programming to broadcast the riots live on television.^[8] ITN's flagship News at Ten programme gave a lot of coverage to the riots.^{[9][10][11][12]}

A Zenit fan was also attacked and stabbed.^[13] Six Rangers fans were arrested on suspicion of grevious bodily harm.^[14]