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.
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. 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.
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. ITN's flagship News at Ten programme gave a lot of coverage to the riots.
A Zenit fan was also attacked and stabbed. Six Rangers fans were arrested on suspicion of grevious bodily harm.
UEFA stadium categories
UEFA stadium categories are categories for football stadiums laid out in the UEFA Stadium Infrastructure Regulations. Using these regulations, stadiums are rated as category one, two, three, or elite (in order going up). These categories replaced the old method of ranking stadiums as four or five star in 2006. A stadium must be categorised as elite to host the final of the UEFA Champions League or the UEFA Europa League. These are UEFA's two top club competitions.
Biricodar
Biricodar is dicitrate salt called Incel. It is a pharmaceutical drug made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in 1999 to help treat ovarian cancer patients.
The Futureheads
The Futureheads are a four-piece English, punk band from Sunderland. Their name comes from the title of The Flaming Lips album, "Hit to Death in the Future Head".
The band met at City of Sunderland College as a quartet consisting of Barry Hyde (vocals and guitar), David "Jaff" Craig (bass), Peter Brewis (drums), and Ross Millard (vocals and guitar). Millard and Craig had been in another local band together before. They used the Sunderland City Detached Youth Project building (where Brewis and Hyde worked) as a free practice space. The project was meant to get young people off the streets by using music. They first performed in 2000. The reputation in the area grew through word-of-mouth. Hyde's younger brother Dave replaced Brewis (who went on to form Field Music).
In an interview with Channel 4's "4Music", Barry Hyde said that Dave Hyde was given a golden guitar by his parents when he was young. But Barry had taken it off him to learn to strum his first chords. Dave was left with nothing, forcing him to take up the drums.
The Futureheads played their first gig at Ashbrooke Cricket and Rugby Club in December, 2000. They debuted with their "Nul Book Standard" EP and then their "123 Nul EP" on March 10, 2003. Later that year they released their first single, "First Day," on August 4.
The Futureheads released their self-titled debut album in September, 2004 on 679 recordings. Five tracks of the tracks were produced by Andy Gill of Gang of Four. The rest of the album was produced by Paul Epworth. The song "Decent Days And Nights" from the album was featured in the video game soundtrack to "" on PlayStation 2 and Xbox as well as EA's "Rugby 2005".
On February 21, 2005, "Hounds of Love", a cover of a Kate Bush song, was released as a single. It reached number eight in the UK Singles Chart in its first week. It was named Best Single of 2005 by "NME". The band toured the United States. They later supported the Pixies, Foo Fighters and Snow Patrol.
They performed at BBC Radio One's One Big Weekend, held in their home town of Sunderland over the weekend of May 7-8, 2005. On May 8, 2005 Sunderland A.F.C. picked up the Coca-Cola Championship trophy. In tribute, the Futureheads performed a set live at the Stadium of Light as pre-match entertainment.
The stand-alone EP, "Area" was released in November, 2005 while the band was working on their second album "News and Tributes". According to "NME" in February, 2006, it took only five weeks to make. The first single from the album was "Skip to the End" released on May 15. The album "News and Tributes" was first released on May 29, 2006.
The band became bothered by major label music business and being under contract were very lucky to be set free by 679 Recordings. Hyde said "we were desperate to get out of the record deal, they could easily have kept us and made us try and make more records but we didn't want that'
Throughout the rest of 2006, The Futureheads started their own independent record label, Nul Records, and started working on songs for their next album.
In June, 2007, they reportedly completed work on their third album, "This Is Not the World," which was released in May, 2008. Millard said that he expected the new album to be punkier than the last album. He also said that the band was close to splitting during the time after the second album was released.
The band made a free download called "Broke Up The Time" available from their website on November 9, 2007. They also announced three gigs in the UK followed by a full UK tour. They now have their own label, Nul Records, set up exclusively to distribute Futureheads material. In December, 2007 the band released a video of them walking around Carnaby Street, London to the single "The Beginning of the Twist." It was also accompanied by a free download of a song called "Crash."
The second single from their album "Radio Heart" was released on May 19, 2008 from their album "This Is Not The World" followed by the release of the music video for the single on April 16. A third single from the album, "Walking Backwards," was released on August 4, 2008.
Their latest single, "I Wouldn't Be Like This If You Were Here," was released on December 8, 2008. In 2009 the band played at the biggest open-air festival in Europe (400,000 - 500,000 rock fans every year) - Przystanek Woodstock in Poland. In November, 2009, the band allowed fans to download a new free track, "Struck Dumb," for a period of two weeks. The band released their new album, entitled The Chaos, on 26th April 2010 in the UK. The overall sound is a little darker and punkier than that of its predecessor. The Chaos will be released in the USA on 1 June 2010, on Dovecote Records.
The band is influenced by New Wave and Post-punk bands such as Devo, XTC, Wire, and the Post-hardcore Fugazi. They are also strongly influenced by 1990's singer Lou Bega.
Dicynodont
The Dicynodontia are a sub-group of the extinct animals called therapsids. They were small to large herbivorous (plant-eating) animals with two tusks; 'dicynodont' means 'two dog tooth'. They are also the most successful and diverse of the non-mammalian therapsids, with over 70 genera (types) known.
All of them had the same basic body plan. They were built like small tanks, with sturdy legs at each corner. They were not fast movers, but were obviously strong and lived in groups rather as many plant-eaters do today. Their body shape was similar to certain types of modern mammals such as pigs and rhinoceros.
Fossils discovered in Poland indicate that dicynodonts survived at least until about 200 million years ago (the Upper Triassic period. Six fragments of fossil skull bone discovered in Australia (Queensland) may indicate that dicynodonts survived much longer, until about 150 million years ago (the Cretaceous period) in the region called the southern Gondwana.