Rangers in Talks for Sparta Prague Friendly Before Europa League Draw

Rangers are in talks to arrange a pre-season friendly against Sparta Prague on July 16 in Grassau, Germany, during both clubs’ overlapping summer training camps near the Austrian border. Record Sport understands no contract has been signed, and Czech media reports describe a 4pm kickoff with the game potentially behind closed doors. Danny Röhl’s first full pre-season as Rangers head coach could include a workout against the club that has appeared in three Europa League campaigns alongside Ibrox in the last five years.

Both clubs enter the Europa League (EL) third qualifying round this summer, with the draw scheduled for July 20, four days after the planned Grassau fixture.

The Grassau Plans

Rangers are planning their summer training camp in Austria. Sparta Prague will base themselves in Grassau, a Bavarian municipality just over the German-Austrian border, and the geographical overlap has created a scheduling opportunity. Czech media, cited by Record Sport, say Sparta Prague’s Grassau programme includes three opponents:

• July 16, 4pm: Rangers (Scotland)
• Gamba Osaka (Japan)
• Nordsjaelland (Denmark)

The Ibrox side has not committed yet. Record Sport reports active negotiations as of early June, no signed agreement, and the possibility the game runs without spectators if it goes ahead.

For Röhl, the timing carries a specific weight. He accepted the Rangers job on October 20, 2025, with no runway before his first game. Within days he was on a flight to Bergen for a Europa League fixture against Brann, managing a squad he had barely assessed. He told the club on appointment day there was no time to waste and he would start work immediately. The entire 2025-26 season ran at that pace, without any pre-season block under his watch. A full summer camp, with a structured training period before July competitive action, is his first opportunity to set physical standards and tactical patterns from the start rather than adapting in-season.

The Austrian Alps is a well-worn pre-season corridor for clubs across central Europe, popular for altitude work, quality facilities, and focused preparation away from domestic pressures. Sparta Prague’s choice of Grassau puts their camp in the same region Rangers are using.

From Group A to Seville

The 2021-22 Group and the Morelos Double

Rangers and Sparta Prague first appeared in the same competition in the 2021-22 Europa League group stage, drawn into Group A alongside Lyon and Brondby. Under Steven Gerrard, the campaign opened with two defeats: a 2-0 loss to Lyon on matchday one, then another setback in Prague against Sparta on matchday two. Four points from the next two rounds against Brondby kept Rangers in control of their qualification fate, but the final group fixture still required a result.

By then, Gerrard had left for Aston Villa. Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who had played for Rangers in the late 1990s before later managing Feyenoord to the Eredivisie title, was brought in as his successor with minimal preparation time. His first European game as Rangers manager was at Ibrox against Sparta Prague, requiring a 2-0 win to advance. Alfredo Morelos, the Colombian striker who had been the club’s most consistent European scorer in that era, delivered both goals. Rangers went through as group runners-up.

What followed ran to six knockout rounds: Borussia Dortmund eliminated, Red Star Belgrade knocked out, Braga beaten, RB Leipzig overcome in the semi-final. The final against Eintracht Frankfurt in Seville was Rangers’ first major European final in fifty years, spanning a run that was kept alive by a single evening at Ibrox against the same Czech side Röhl is now targeting in pre-season.

Clement and the 2023-24 Return

Philippe Clement’s Rangers found themselves in the same draw as Sparta Prague two seasons later. The 2023-24 Europa League group stage placed both clubs together again, alongside Real Betis of Spain and Aris Limassol of Cyprus. Brian Priske’s Sparta qualified from that group, beat Galatasaray in the knockout phase (6-4 on aggregate), and were eventually eliminated by Liverpool, who beat them 11-2 on aggregate across both round-of-16 legs, a result documented in UEFA’s Europa League head-to-head records for the fixture. Clement’s Rangers did not reach the knockout phase in that campaign.

Three consecutive Ibrox managers had now faced Sparta Prague in formal European competition. Röhl has not encountered them in any competitive setting.

Priske’s Return to Prague

Brian Priske, a Danish coach who had previously managed Midtjylland and Royal Antwerp, first arrived at Sparta Prague in May 2022. The club had not won the Czech First League in nine years; Priske won it in his opening season. He defended the title in 2023-24 and completed the double with the Czech Cup. Since his first Sparta appointment in 2022, the club reached the Europa League round of 16 in 2023-24, their most significant continental run in recent memory. The Galatasaray knockout that season, won 6-4 on aggregate, illustrated the level Priske had built.

He left for Feyenoord in June 2024 when Arne Slot moved to Liverpool, creating the vacancy in Rotterdam that Priske was brought in to fill. Feyenoord advanced from the UEFA Champions League group phase under his management but ran into domestic inconsistency, and the club sacked him in February 2025. His former assistant at Sparta, Lars Friis, had taken over the Prague job in the meantime and oversaw a 2025-26 season in which the club finished fourth in the Czech First League. That drop from title contention put Sparta into a Conference League berth rather than the Europa League, and their campaign in that competition ended in the round of 16 against AZ Alkmaar.

Priske returned to the Letná Stadium in June 2025 on a multi-year contract. Sparta’s EL third qualifying round entry for 2026-27 comes after a season that fell below the standards he set during his first tenure.

Röhl Inherits the Rivalry

When Rangers confirmed Röhl’s two-and-a-half-year appointment on October 20, 2025, he became the third candidate the board had formally approached after talks with Kevin Muscat and Steven Gerrard both failed to produce agreements. Vice Chairman Paraag Marathe, who also represents 49ers Enterprises, described the process as thorough and said Röhl had demonstrated the tactical intelligence and hunger required for the job.

His coaching resume covered the highest-profile environments in European football. He assisted Ralph Hasenhüttl at RB Leipzig and Southampton, then joined Hansi Flick’s staff at Bayern Munich in August 2019. In his first season, Bayern won the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal, and the UEFA Champions League. The following year brought the Bundesliga title again, plus the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup, before Röhl and Flick moved on to the Germany national team for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. His first head coaching role came in October 2023 at Sheffield Wednesday in the EFL Championship (England’s second tier), where he kept the club in the division and left by mutual agreement in July 2025.

It is a huge privilege to be taking on the role of Head Coach at such an incredible club, recognised around the world. I know it has been a difficult start to the season, but there is still so much to play for in four competitions, and my staff and I will give it everything to reward the supporters and the club.

Those were his words at the official appointment, published by Rangers on their club website. The season that followed produced genuine momentum early: he won 11 of his first 14 Premiership games, closing a gap that had stood at 13 points behind league leaders Hearts when he arrived. The season ended without trophies. Reports in spring 2026 linked him to openings at VfL Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkusen; he publicly dismissed both and committed to a summer rebuild. This pre-season is where that commitment becomes operational.

Before the Draw

Rangers enter the 2026-27 EL third qualifying round as a seeded side, carrying a UEFA coefficient of 59.25 built from their accumulated European results. According to the 2026-27 Europa League qualifying seeding table, Sparta Prague enter the same round with a coefficient of 38.25, unseeded.

In the draw, seeded sides face unseeded opponents. Scotland and the Czech Republic sit in separate UEFA national association brackets, so there is no country protection keeping the two clubs apart at this stage. A competitive pairing is possible from the same round both enter.

The qualifying window runs from July 10 through August 28. Third qualifying round first legs are expected in late July. For Rangers, winning through to the EL league phase guarantees a Thursday autumn schedule and the financial stability that comes with it. Losing at any qualifying stage transfers them to the Conference League, the competition Sparta Prague were in last season. If Rangers win the third qualifying round, they enter the EL play-off, a further two-legged knockout before the league phase begins.

The EL qualifying draw falls on July 20. The Grassau friendly is four days before it.