Today the Celtic fans who’ve been pushing Resolution 12 succeeded in putting their case in front of UEFA, when an ad appeared in Switzerland’s main national daily newspaper. The ad, entitled Persistence Beats Resistance, filled a half page and was sub-headed “Scottish football governance is failing and the taxpayer is picking up the cost.”
This is the first ad of three. Another is scheduled to appear in The Guardian soon, which will bring the campaign to a metropolitan political, media savvy audience and the third is due to run in a Scottish based newspaper when one agrees to publish it.
This is the same old story with the Scottish press; they don’t want to touch this with a 20 foot pole, so we have to go outside of Scotland to get our point across.
Today the media doorstepped Stewart Regan at Hampden as he left the SFA AGM today, and they asked him about the issue. He tried to dismiss it, but made it clear that he’s no longer in a position to stop either the Requisitioners or Celtic from taking the matter forward. Regan can talk all he likes, and spout whatever nonsense comes into his head, but this issue has now progressed past the point where it can be contained by simple denials on the steps of the National Stadium.
As I said in a previous piece, the importance of this can’t be over-stated.
This campaign has finally moved off the internet and towards something more direct. As the ad itself points out, Celtic fans have now submitted all the relevant information to the UEFA Club Financial Control Body. This, too, may prove to be a massive step forward. UEFA does not normally involve itself with such issues without a specific complaint from a club – whether Celtic go that far remains to be seen, but the board would do well to consider fan anger on the subject – but there’s only so much they can realistically ignore.
The submissions will keep coming in.
The pressure will keep on and on.
Eventually, this has to crack.
I think that most of us have pretty much given up on the idea that anyone in the Scottish media will voluntarily take this case up on our behalf. They’ve been happy enough to broadcast Regan’s denial today without ever, once, giving the same publicity to the claims themselves.
They completely ignored the key issues up until now, and they will continue to ignore them far into the future.
The onus is always going to come back to us, to what we’re willing to do, to how far we’re willing to go.
CQN made the announcement about this action before mid-day. It took until now for a one single Scottish media outlet to mention it, and only then in the context of Regan’s pitiful denial, even though this story is an enormous one. A group of Scottish football supporters has crowdfunded an ad in a newspaper in a foreign country, to get the attention of the governing body of European football about corruption here at home.
It doesn’t matter whether you believe the corruption exists or not, as the Scottish media repeatedly claims is their position.
This is a news story.
These guys and a bunch of others, not satisfied with the way this matter has been dealt with, have dipped into their own pockets and put out a big chunk of change so that it can be resolved.
When you see a story like that not being covered at all that gives you an insight into just how corrupt the press’s position actually is.
This is an attack on their profession as much as anything else and the silence from them is deafening and appalling.
I said in a previous piece that this kind of thing shames them.
I believed even they would have no option but to cover it once the ad was actually out there.
So far, not a soul has.
They continue to amaze me.
More and more, you become aware that if this wasn’t taken up by Celtic fans that no-one at all would bother.
Scottish football’s future remains in our hands.