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Celtic v Rangers – team news, preview & selectors

Jota and Calvin Bassey

Venue: Hampden Park, Glasgow Date: Sunday, 17 April Kick-off: 14:00 BST
Coverage: Listen to match commentary & analysis on Sportsound, follow live text updates on BBC Sport website & app, and watch highlights on Sportscene

Celtic meet Rangers for the second time in 14 days for the right to meet Hearts in the Scottish Cup final.

Scottish Premiership leaders Celtic have won the last two games between the pair – 3-0 at Celtic Park in February and 2-1 at Ibrox.

And, they have not lost at Hampden since Mark Warburton’s Rangers beat them on penalties in the semi-final in 2016.

That was also the last time Rangers reached a Scottish Cup final.

However, they go into this game on a high having reached the Europa League semi-final with a 3-2 aggregate win over Portugal’s Braga on Thursday.

Team news

Celtic striker Kyogo Furuhashi could make his first start since December, but fellow forward Giorgos Giakoumakis seems set to miss out.

Furuhashi made his comeback from a hamstring injury as a 74th-minute substitute in last weekend’s 7-0 win over St Johnstone after Giakoumakis went off early in the game with a minor injury in the same area.

James Forrest and David Turnbull are also available again for Celtic.

Rangers are without Alfredo Morelos, Filip Helander and Ianis Hagi, while Borna Barisic went off with cramp in Thursday’s extra-time win over Braga.

Choose your starting XI. It’s up to you how to approach it – you could go for the team you WANT the manager to pick or the one you THINK he will.

Choose your starting XI. It’s up to you how to approach it – you could go for the team you WANT the manager to pick or the one you THINK he will.

What they said

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou: “You can treat it just like another game but I think you lose the unique aspect of the fact you want your players to embrace the big occasion. You don’t want your players to shy away from it.

“My role is just to make sure that the focus is on the important things, the things that have got us to this point, and also highlight the fact that the key to these big games is to be ready to take the opportunity.

“You don’t want to let too many of those opportunities go by in your career. I’m not one for telling the guys to ignore the hype or ignore the attention. Particularly at this football club, it’s really important that the guys embrace that and want that.”

Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst: “We are through to the semi-final of Europe and it was a great night on Thursday and it gives us a lot of positive momentum.

“I think that’s very positive going into the game tomorrow. We don’t have any injury doubts. We have everyone available so we are happy with the squad.

“It was a tough and demanding game physically but we have enough time to recover from that. We will have to wait until the final session later but we have everyone on board.”

Sourced From BBC

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