This. Again. This garbage. How many more times?
If you’ve been following the news today you’ll know this old cobblers about an Atlantic League – this particular version called the North Atlantic League – is being resurrected again, like a horror movie villain who just won’t stay dead.
Listen, I know there are a lot of us who want to see this club play at a higher level than we get here in the SPL, but these kind of rumours aren’t helpful.
When some form of European Super League comes along, there’ll be one sure-fire way to gauge its merits and that’s how you’ll be able to separate the truth from the fiction in the meantime.
Such a league would be based on merit.
Slots in it would go to the highest placed teams in the domestic leagues; they wouldn’t be based on any other criteria.
Don’t let anybody kid you otherwise. It’s the only way UEFA would ever sanction them.
Tell me this; what would be the moral difference between what the so-called “elite clubs” (read; those with the most money) are allegedly attempting, locking out the likes of Celtic, and us if we joined, instead, a competition which rejected the legitimate membership claims of Aberdeen, Hearts and others?
Because this is where all these stupid ideas break down for me; how do you accurately judge who gets an invite and who doesn’t?
Do you introduce promotion and relegation, giving the clubs who aren’t there in the first season a chance to climb the ranks?
Otherwise, isn’t it just all about greed?
Where’s the meritocracy?
Why would UEFA ever allow supranational bodies to start popping up all over the game on an invites only basis?
Today’s reports say “Celtic and Sevco” might be leaving Scottish football, but that’s never going to happen whilst their club is outside the top three. Because in line with sporting integrity – which is the only way I’d imagine Celtic would ever join such a league – Aberdeen would be next in line for a place, with Hearts after them, in such a competition.
Anything else would make it a fraud.
Isn’t it amazing too that you never hear Neil Doncaster or Stewart Regan on these issues? Because aren’t these the people who’ve been telling us, for years, that the national sport here is dependent on just two teams? You’d think they’d be more animated by the dawning of the very financial Armageddon they’ve been talking about, right?
When they start to panic you’ll know there’s something in it.
The Daily Record deserves some kind of special award for its coverage over the last two days, and I’ve not finished talking about that today.
Because a “Celtic tax scam” story followed by this … you’d be forgiving for thinking there’s a real story going somewhere, but one they don’t want to write and, in fact, are going to great lengths to ignore. And, as I pointed out yesterday, of course there is.