Apparently, last Saturday, I and hundreds of others went on a hooligan rampage and “destroyed” the West London suburb of Brentford, while attending a pre-season ‘friendly’ between weakened sides from Brentford’s League One club and current Scottish champions, Celtic.
Read MoreA combination of “banter” and anti-Islamic paranoia made one banner at the Scottish Cup final considerably more famous than it would otherwise have been.
Read MoreAs slightly cumbersome Celtic centre-back Efie Ambrose got another indeterminate body part in the way of another intricate Barcelona passing move, my shredded nerves were joined by an extra sense of unease, as I thought of Chelsea. Celtic’s rearguard action in the Nou Camp on October 23rd was almost universally praised and manager Neil Lennon’s team were deemed heart-breakingly unlucky to lose in the 94th-minute. But even then, I found it impossible to entirely concur. It wasn’t just because I didn’t think Celtic kept the ball well enough on the nine or so occasions they got possession (striker Gary Hooper miscontrolled one pass simply because he momentarily failed to recognise the round thing hurtling towards him, not having seen it for so long). It was also because I had derided Chelsea as “lucky” and unworthy when they used the self-same “backs-to-the-wall” tactics to win their Champions League semi-final in the same stadium just six months previously. And I derided them as luckier and less worthy when they repeated the “trick” to become the unlikeliest of European club champions in the Munich final 26 days after that. Chelsea received unkinder reviews because they had the talent to play an altogether more expansive game and chose not to; and because they are more generally disliked for any number of other reasons (which would take a whole article to detail). But they overcame Barca...
Read MoreSince the full extent of Rangers’ financial troubles was exposed in 2010, their fans have almost totally refused to accept that their club is to blame for anything at all ever. One manifestation of this is the accusation that any critic of the Rangers must be a bigot, an obsessive, a Celtic fan, or all three. Anyone claiming support for, say, Albion Rovers, or Kingstonian, is almost automatically branded a liar. For years, Celtic fans have seen Rangers fans throughout the media like some sort of bastardised “sixth sense” (“I see blue-nosed people”). So this isn’t a one-way or new phenomenon within the confines of Glasgow football fandom. But sometimes, when it looks like a Rangers/Celtic fan and sounds like a Rangers/Celtic fan, it IS a Rangers/Celtic fan, as was exposed for the nation to hear last Saturday evening, on BBC Radio 5 Live’s famous “6-0-6” phone-in programme. A “Kilmarnock fan,” Mal, from Ayr, phoned in to complain about the Scottish media’s obsession with Celtic’s 2-1 Champions League defeat of Barcelona at Celtic Park. There has been something of a Celtic love-fest in the Anglocentric national media. And some could argue that there is a brush of double standard about lauding Celtic for the method of their victory, while bemoaning Chelsea for their method of becoming European Champions last spring. But Celtic’s win over a Barcelona side of such...
Read MoreThree games into the Premier League season, the distinctive sound of burning pitchforks is in the air. Without a win from the six matches that they have played between them, both Andre Villa Boas and Brendan Rodgers are already being cast into a familiar mould – that of the hapless managerial failure. Both are managers whose appointments carried an element of risk about them. Villa Boas excelled at Porto in a way that few other managers have in recent years in coaching this team to the Europa League and the Portuguese championship, but his stock fell with his turbulent spell at Stamford Bridge, while Rodgers arrival at Liverpool came off the back of success at Swansea City but a nagging concern that his name might not be of the pedigree that supporters of that particular club might have expected. After their opening matches of the season, though, both managers are already falling towards a familiar looking black hole of ridicule and contempt, but to what extent is this a reflection of the football culture that we inhabit rather than their respective managerial abilities. There was a time when media coverage of the game was considerably more scarce than it is now, and it doesn’t seem implausible to suggest that this saturation coverage has an effect upon the attitude of some supporters. Every Premier League match is An Event, to...
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