Rangers vs Bayer Leverkusen motion raised by MSP as he urges Holyrood to answer key COVID-19 decision

The two sides met at Ibrox in one of the final mass gatherings in the UK before lockdown.

A Labour MSP has called on the Scottish Government to explain why they allowed Rangers’ Europa League clash with Bayer Leverkusen to go ahead.

The match was one of the last to take place in the UK on March 12 with 50,000 supporters inside the stadium.

In that number was around 1000 Bayer Leverkusen fans, from the worst hit part of Germany, which had already shut down mass gatherings.

And now Neil Findlay has demanded to know from the Scottish Government why that was allowed to happen in a motion put forward to Holyrood.

It states: “To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it considered that the Rangers versus Bayer Leverkusen football match on 12 March 2020 should go ahead, in light of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, an on whose advice the match was sanction.”

The motion is expected to be answered by the government on June 9 and could explain why that game had gone ahead.

UEFA also had the power to call it off and there were doubts about whether the game would go ahead throughout that day.

Football was postponed 24 hours later although it was originally planned for matches in Scotland to take place that weekend, including a game between Rangers and Celtic which would have saw another 50,000 inside Ibrox.

Just one hour after the Rangers game finished, Arsenal boss and former Ibrox star Mikel Arteta was confirmed to have the virus which led to the EPL suspending fixtures.

It comes the day after a London based professor stated Liverpool’s Champions League clash with Atletico Madrid and the Cheltenham Festival contributed to an increase in deaths.

Professor Tim Spector from King’s College London said the two events ‘caused increased suffering and death that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred.’

There was no mention of Rangers’ game with Bayer Leverkusen but given the size of the event, Spector’s research could potentially show similar results in Scotland.

The research showed data from an app used to report coronavirus symptoms showed Cheltenham and the North West of England had become ‘hotspots’ for COVID-19.

More than 250,000 people attended Cheltenham Festival while 52,000 were inside Anfield for the Champions League clash.