Walter Smith is God!

This should have been obvious after what Walter Smith did with the Scottish national team. Smith inherited a shell of a team ater disastrous reign of Bernie Vogt, the least popular German to land in Scotland since Hess. Smith instantly restored respectability to close out the World Cup qualifiers. He then nearly took the team through a true "Group of Death" in the European qualifiers going up against the likes of Italy, France, Ukraine, and Georgia.

Scotland was leading the group when Walter Smith took on another rescue operation. This time it was his old club Rangers who were in chaos after the Paul LeGuen era. In PLG's first year, Hearts broke through the Old Firms lock on Scotland's two Champions League slots finishing third in the SPL. Midseason into his second year, it looked no better and Sir David Murray pulled the plug and called in Walter Smith. Smith rallied the team to a second place finish in the SPL. So far this year, Smith has won the CIS Cup, is in the finals for the Scottish Cup and is currently within 5 points of winning the SPL with three games in hand.

But Smith's greatest creation has been Rangers' European saga. He deftly led Rangers through the group stage and into seeming disaster being drawn against three league champions - Lyon, Barcelona, and Stuttgart. Off the mark, Rangers beat Lyon in France, Stuttgart in Glasgow and drew Barcelona in Glasgow. The gas ran out against Lyon at Ibrox and Rangers sputtered to a third place finish. Still this was good enough to land Rangers into the UEFA Cup group stage.

Rangers started of by knocking out Panathinaikos on away goals. Werder Bremen, Sporting Lisbon fell in succession and today Rangers took down Fiorentina in penalties. They will play Zenit St. Petersburg in the finals at City of Manchester Stadium in Manchester, England. Only a fool would underestimate Zenit after they thoroughly took apart Bayern Munich earlier today, but only a fool would underestimate Walter Smith. And here is the rest of it.