School's Out For Summer At Celtic Park

Article by James Payne

As the domestic season closes there is not too much to report on Celtic wise, though it has been an interesting enough week in the wider football world. The one story as of Tuesday morning that directly involves Celtic is the signing of Dedryck Boyata from Manchester City for a fee of approximately £1.5m. I know that the Belgian is a defender, has been on City’s books for 9 years, has been capped once by his country and that he has had loan spells with Bolton Wanderers and Twente Enschede, but as I have never seen him play I cannot offer anything other than that I hope he is good. If indeed he signs.

Congratulations to Inverness Caledonian Thistle (ICT) for winning their first major honour after landing the Scottish Cup with a 2-1 win over Falkirk in the final. John Hughes (ICT’s manager) was understandably delighted and his side has had an excellent season though in the cup itself they undoubtedly had some luck in both the final and the semi-final. On Saturday Hughes’ side looked to be in real trouble when reduced to ten men half way through the second half and when the Bairns capitalised on their numerical advantage by equalising the first victory by a lower league team in the nation’s premier cup competition in 77 years looked on the cards. But in one of their few breakaways Falkirk’s keeper, McDonald, mishandled a weak shot by Watkins parrying it into the path of James Vincent and that was that. Once again an ICT player clearly handled the ball in a dangerous position– albeit outside the penalty box- only for the referee to wave play on.

The media has of course been filled with stories following on from the arrest of a number of senior FIFA officials by the FBI and the subsequent re-election of Sepp Blatter. An awful lot of hot air has been blown following all this but unless one of FIFA’s sponsors withdraws funds I doubt anybody in UEFA or that body’s member associations will do anything that actually hints at possession of a backbone. FIFA has been corrupt for decades as a succession of its senior officials have got unfeasibly wealthy and this corruption has trickled down through the game. For years we in the UK have tut-tutted at the various financial shenanigans in Italy, the bizarre land deals that have benefitted Real Madrid and the tax affairs of FC Barcelona but north and south of the Border all sorts of dodgy characters have been allowed to take over some of our biggest clubs with no real background checks being carried out. Leo Messi’s staggeringly brilliant performances recently – the best I have seen since Diego Maradona’s masterpieces in the 1986 World Cup- have been a reminder that football can be a thrilling, wonderful sport but overall the game is in danger of being destroyed by those who run it.

Mention of dodgy characters running football clubs brings me nicely to Glasgow ‘Rangers’. Dave King – convicted of a string of tax evasion charges by a South African court and who paid a huge fine to keep himself out of jail- is in fact fairly low down the scale in comparison to some of the chancers that have been waved through by the British football associations over the years, not least some of those who have been allowed to run the various versions of Rangers themselves but neither is he an untypical figure in British football.

Quite where King’s club is headed after its ignominious 6-1 aggregate loss to Motherwell in the play-off for the remaining place in next season’s Scottish Premiership is hard to guess. Admittedly losing a dozen of the players who failed so spectacularly in the season just ended is probably no bad thing for them but whether there is any money to finance the purchase of new players is not yet clear. It is 12 weeks since King’s coronation at an EGM and on that occasion it appeared as though the finances of the Ibrox club would be improved considerably but in fact things seem to be carrying on as before with injections of capital being made to keep the club afloat whilst Mike Ashley remains an influential, if unwelcome, presence in the ‘Rangers’ set up.

The new Rangers that rose from the ashes of the original club have won almost no friends in the last three years and the humiliation of the play off defeats to a Motherwell side which had dropped nine places from their previous season’s placing will have been celebrated by more than just Motherwell and Celtic supporters. Stuart McCall had looked to have instilled some of the battling qualities so conspicuously absent under Ally McCoist and Kenny McDowell but against ‘Well their football was Neanderthal and as I said a few weeks ago there was no evidence, on the park, to suggest that ‘Rangers’ would have brought anything worthwhile or stylish to the Premiership far less a serious challenge to Celtic.

I would imagine there will be a media orchestrated campaign to bring about further reconstruction of the league set up that will ensure that the Ibrox club will play in the top division in 2016/17 even if they finish outside next season’s play-off positions. If in 2015/16 ‘Rangers’ have the kind of season that Hearts have had in the one just finished then, perhaps grudgingly, I would admit that they deserve to be in the top league and that when they took up that place they would, as I expect Hearts to, ‘hit the ground running’. But at the moment that looks unlikely and contrary to the predictions of the media the demise of the original Rangers has not led to ‘Armageddon’ in our football – seven clubs including Celtic have won trophies in the last three and a half years and the national team has improved a fair bit in that time. There is of course much that is not good about our football- and Celtic probably would benefit from a truly sustained challenge in the league- but I cannot see how the addition of the current ‘Rangers’ with their myriad on and off-field issues would improve things even slightly and things were probably worse in 2011 when Rangers were still owned by David Murray. The media seem to have an unhealthy desire to turn the clock back to the days when they were fed and watered by Rangers’ grandees, God was in his heaven and Celtic had never won the European Cup – Scotland and the world have moved on -they and ‘Rangers’ should.

Have a nice break from me.

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