Both Betfred Cup semi-finals will take place at Hampden on the same day.
The Scottish Professional Football League announced that Rangers would face Aberdeen at noon on Sunday, October 28 and Celtic will play Hearts at 7.45pm.
The plan is the SPFL’s solution to a problem caused by both Glasgow clubs’ involvement in the Europa League on the Thursday night, which effectively ruled out the normal practice of spreading the games out over the weekend.
A full Ladbrokes Premiership fixture card in the subsequent midweek further reduced the options.
⚽️🏆 | The #BetfredCup semi-finals will both be played at Hampden Park on Sunday 28 October. pic.twitter.com/ErGeTrC8Oe
— SPFL (@spfl) September 27, 2018
BT Murrayfield was tipped to stage one of the matches but the league has made the controversial choice to welcome four sets of fans to the national stadium on the same day following talks with the clubs and police.
The SPFL stated that it was “contractually obliged to bring both semi-finals to Hampden”.
SPFL secretary Iain Blair stressed that he and his colleagues had to find a solution which gave Celtic and Rangers the “necessary two-day gap between competitive matches”.
Blair added: “We’ve been working hard with Police Scotland and Hampden Park on contingency planning for exactly this scenario and, together, we examined every possible permutation.
“The crowded fixture calendar means that this is the best and most practical solution as any alternative had the knock-on effect of causing major fixture congestion, not only for Celtic and Rangers, but for several other SPFL clubs.
“We met with representatives of all four clubs earlier and explained that this was the only feasible outcome.
“The fact that both Celtic and Rangers are in Europe, and will hopefully be playing in the Europa League after the New Year, is obviously good news for Scottish football, but it does mean that our capacity for rescheduling games is significantly curtailed.
“We can confirm that Police Scotland have advised that the Aberdeen vs Rangers game should be played first.”
A spokesman for Hampden Park added: “We have already started the detailed planning process which is standard practice for all major events at the stadium.
“Hampden is the home of Scottish football and we all look forward to assisting our SPFL colleagues with the delivery of two very exciting Betfred Cup semi-finals at the stadium.”
