Rangers news bulletin as transfer target Manhoef reveals his ‘great passion’ and Katic eyes up stunning Euro 2025 chance

March 28, 2025 Owngoal FOOTBALL 0

It’s all eyes on January now for Rangers who look to bounce back from Saturday’s defeat to Celtic.

Million Manhoef – Rangers target’s career in numbers

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Reported Rangers target Million Manhoef could have easily been a KICKBOXER – but he revealed why he chose football over his other ‘great passion.’

Manhoef’s father is three-time MMA world champion Melvin, who is a mixed martial arts and kickboxing legend with one of the best knockout records in history before his retirement last year. Vitesse winger Manhoef, who is thought to be a target for a £2.5m switch to Ibrox, was a guest in the Dutch TV channel Zippo Sports’s Kick the Net programme at the weekend. And he discussed why he chose football over martial arts.

He said: “My father and mother separated when I was six or seven. But before that, of course, I was pushed into kickboxing. I was two and a half years old when I put on the kickboxing gloves. When I turned four I also started playing football and did both sports. I fought in competitions and became Dutch kickboxing champion. Kickboxing is certainly a great passion, but at a certain point I could no longer combine the two sports and I chose football.

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“It’s a good thing that many people know that he is my father. But I want to do my own thing. He has had a great career, but to do that he had to make sacrifices with his family. And I grew up with my mother. I have experienced pressure at some point in my career because of my surname, but it’s not been too bad.

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Million Manhoef in action for Vitesse

“When I first broke into the Vitesse Arnhem first team I heard about it a lot and everyone was always asking about him. I used to say, ‘what about my mother!'”

Philippe Clement already has one January target secured with Wolves striker Fabio Silva joining Rangers on loan from January 1. But he wasn’t discussing other targets as, when asked about Manhoef in particular, he told BBC Sportsound: “I never speak about players we are interested in or not because then I can speak every day about rumours, there are so many rumours in Glasgow that are wrong. We will speak about players that are in the building and with Fabio it is the case and this year he’ll push like the rest to make it a great season.

“How many are we looking to bring in? These are things we talked about with the board, everyone’s aligned about that and we’ll see what is possible in January. Everyone is working hard and pushing to get the maximum out of what we want. I also want to see players pushing to stay in the team and at the club. They did that today so that’s the most important thing.”