{"id":72244,"date":"2025-08-06T07:17:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T07:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=72244"},"modified":"2025-08-06T07:17:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T07:17:01","slug":"ucl-qualifiers-dessers-shines-with-goal-assist-in-rangers-win-over-plzen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/08\/06\/ucl-qualifiers-dessers-shines-with-goal-assist-in-rangers-win-over-plzen\/","title":{"rendered":"UCL Qualifiers: Dessers Shines With Goal, Assist in Rangers\u2019 Win Over Plzen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Fakande Oluwamayowa<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cyriel Dessers delivered a stellar performance as Rangers defeated Viktoria Plzen 3-0 in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League third qualifying round on Tuesday night at Ibrox.<\/p>\n<p>The Nigerian forward scored one goal and provided an assist, earning him a solid rating of 8 out of 10 from The Scottish Sun.<\/p>\n<p>Highlighting his contribution, the publication wrote: \u201cPreferred to Danilo up front and showed why. Dessers set up the opener with a clever pass and then slammed in a penalty. Led the line well throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Djeidi Gassama netted twice, either side of Dessers&#8217; first-half penalty, to give the Scottish side a commanding lead ahead of the second leg in the Czech Republic next week.<\/p>\n<p>Rangers opened the scoring in the 15th minute when Dessers teed up Gassama, who took a touch and finished calmly.<\/p>\n<p>Just before halftime, Dessers doubled the lead from the penalty spot, sending the goalkeeper the wrong way after new signing Oliver Antman was fouled in the box by Matej Vydra.<\/p>\n<p>Six minutes after the break, Gassama added his second and Rangers\u2019 third, heading in his fourth goal of the qualifying campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The winner of the tie between Rangers and Plzen will face either Austria\u2019s Red Bull Salzburg or Belgium\u2019s Club Brugge in the playoff round for a place in the Champions League group stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Fakande Oluwamayowa Cyriel Dessers delivered a stellar performance as Rangers defeated Viktoria Plzen 3-0 in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League third qualifying round on Tuesday night at Ibrox. The Nigerian forward scored one goal and provided an assist, earning him a solid rating of 8 out of 10 from The Scottish [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":72246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72247,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72244\/revisions\/72247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}