Wednesday is an historic day this year. It is the 10th anniversary of the agreement that led to the creation of the Euro and it is the first time Rangers Football Club will have played in a European final for 36 years.
A lot has changed in that time, not least the economics of football, which have turned the beautiful game into a television experience with most ordinary people unable to afford the price of a ticket to a league game.
The game is now funded by television advertising, and increasingly multi-millionaires. There is something wrong to my mind with the fact that next week two English teams will be contesting the final of the Champions League, not least because, certainly in the case of Chelsea, there is a good chance that there will not be an Englishman on the park.
What we now have is a game where clubs made rich by television sponsorships can now buy off the peg teams of superstars for ridiculous amounts of money, which most of us could only afford to watch on the box.
When I was but a youth going to a football match cost about one third of the price of a ticket to the cinema. Now you could take in about 10 movies for the cost of a visit to Ibrox Park on a Saturday and probably go to the cinema every night for the rest of the year on what you will have to pay on the black market for a ticket to see Rangers beat Zenit St Petersburg in Manchester.
Actually going to football was free until I was about 12 because children just got a lift over at the turn styles and the football clubs turned a blind eye as they saw this as investing in future customers.
At the moment the omens for Rangers are very good, in spite of the fact that they have a lot of injuries and must be tired after playing last Wednesday and Saturday while Zenit were given the week off.
And I want Rangers to win not just because I have been watching them since I was seven years old.
Zenit, you see, are a bit like Chelsea. They have gone from being a fairly average Russian club to one full of superstars because Gazprom, Russia's biggest company bought a controlling stake in the team and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in buying players.
Rangers on the other hand have got where they are by building a team while spending what they can afford on international players. Manchester United similarly have a team the backbone of which has been home grown, even if they do occasionally splash millions on people like Wayne Rooney.
And it's not good for the game that local clubs do not provide opportunities for youngsters to make it into the big time and instead go into the market for players.
I read recently that some Bahrain members of parliament were arguing that the government should give lots of money to football in the kingdom to achieve international success.
I would seriously suggest that this cash should go to infrastructure and training rather than inflating the cost of players and managers.
And, unlike some of its neighbours, Bahrain has had some success recently without hiring ageing Europeans at the end of their careers.
Which brings me back to Wednesday.
Rangers will win because they have a track record. They beat Russian side Moscow Dynamo in the final 36 years ago.
That time round they also qualified after beating Sporting Lisbon.
And for the record the two finals we lost were to Fiorentina, whom we beat this time in the semifinal and Bayern Munich, which lost to the Zenit millionaires.
ARTHUR MACDONALD
