Giovanni Van Bronckhorst toasts long-time friendship with Lyon chief Peter Bosz

Giovanni Van Bronckhorst will come up against a long-time friend when Rangers visit Lyon on Thursday.

The Dutchman revealed that the French club’s manager Peter Bosz has been a constant thread throughout his career, since they were both Feyenoord players.

Lyon are through to the knockout stages of the Europa League as Group A winners while Scottish champions Rangers will go into the knockout round play-offs after clinching second place against Sparta Prague last month.

Ahead of the dead rubber in France, Rangers boss Van Bronckhorst spoke about the man who “has been there almost my whole career”.

The former Feyenoord head coach said: “When I was a young player coming through the Feyenoord academy Peter Bosz was captain of the team and he really welcomed me in the squad and was very helpful.

“After that he was the technical director of Feyenoord when I came back in 2007 after my time at Barcelona so I had a lot of conversations with him about the future of Feyenoord and my role in that.

“Of course being a head coach now we played a lot against each other, when he was at Heracles and Vitesse Arnhem and even with Ajax so I have really enjoyed our friendship over the years and for me he has been there almost all my career.”

Meanwhile, Rangers midfielder John Lundstram, who played in the 2-0 defeat by Lyon at Ibrox, is taking no notice of the Les Gones’ domestic form of two wins from their last five.

He said: “We are under no illusion about how much of a good team this Lyon team are, we saw that at Ibrox a couple of months back.

“It was a tough night although I thought we did quite well on the night but couldn’t quite get the goals we wanted.

“They have some massive individual quality throughout the team and so we are under no illusions, it is going to be a tough game.”