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As Celtic Celebrate Lisbon Sevco Celebrates The Obsession With It That Killed Them

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This month two very different anniversary celebrations will play out in Glasgow.

One will be had in public, with numerous events and stars. It will be a genuinely inspiring time for all involved, linking the past and future via a present which promises more success to come.

The other anniversary will be a smaller affair and it will commemorate a series of accomplishments whose pursuit actually ended in failure and worse. It equaled a record, instead of setting a new one. The ultimate prize was never supposed to be that record anyway; they ended up settling for it, when their primary goal proved out of their reach. Those twin setbacks led to a series of astounding errors in judgement and the direct consequence of them was the administration, liquidation and death.

The Lisbon Lions remain the gold standard of Scottish football accomplishment and it was David Murray’s efforts to match them that did for Rangers. Our own nine in a row was built on solid foundations. The European Cup was the crowning glory. Murray’s jealousy of those achievements led him to rash actions that pushed Rangers to the edge. When we Stopped The Ten he knew we were back and in one last effort to push ahead he risked everything on a high-spending strategy backed up by tax evasion. The results are clear to see.

If you are looking at Rangers’ nine in a row years you know they were ultimately a failure. They only equalled the Lions record; they could not break it. European glory was as elusive at the end than it was at the start. They never came close, despite the demented belief amongst their fans that they were “90 minutes from the final.”

Their nine in a row was built on sand. It was bought with money that wasn’t theirs. It was a suicidal strategy and to celebrate it is to celebrate a failed endeavour which ultimately crashed the club. None of the media will write this; it remains a fact nonetheless.

Listen, any achievement should be celebrated, but this is like the Japanese commemorating the “victory” at Pearl Harbour. They’ve forgotten that you can win the battle and lose the war, because war is a series of battles with strategic as well as tactical objectives. The strategy at Ibrox was based on winning a European trophy; they got close, but it would have been the wrong one anyway, and in the end close isn’t good enough.

The talented players they signed helped to support a façade; that Rangers were a huge global “brand” instead of a club that threw money around like confetti. The latter years, when EBT’s made a lot of footballers rich but pushed the club to the brink, were recklessness of the worst kind, and part of that was based on Murray’s belated realisation that the best years were behind them, that the giant task had proved beyond their capabilities, and his ego was such that he would not stay at the club during the waning years … and he wasn’t prepared to make the cuts that would have saved them. In addition to be reckless it was also astonishingly selfish.

In addition to celebrating a failure they are celebrating a failure that doesn’t even belong to them, unless you really do believe they “bought” the club’s history off the shelf like it was a box of Findus Crispy Pancakes.

Celtic celebrates our greatest achievement at a moment when we are on the verge of new glories. A record breaking season will be capped by a look back at the men on whom all the success we’ve enjoyed was built. We may never see a Champions Cup winning team again – I think there will be one, but we may not all be here to see it – and we will certainly never see a team made up of eleven home grown players scale that height, but that just makes these men loom larger.

They once loomed over two clubs. Now living up to them is a burden for Celtic players alone. The shadow of the Lions is too great for Sevco ever to leave; their club will never scale those heights any more than Kilmarnock or Motherwell could. The idea is fantastical. Their new obsession is with stopping us reaching their magic number and surpassing it; our players don’t kid themselves that ten in a row would place them on the same level as the Lions.

Those men stand alone. Their greatness is a monument to where we’ve been but also where we want to be again. Stopping ten has become Sevco’s reason for existing; for Celtic it is simply a milestone to be reached, a step along the way to something more. The difference between what we’re trying to do and what Rangers were is that we’re not allowing it to consume us. We have the luxury of not needing to reach that peak.

We already did. And this month we will celebrate that fact. Across town they will look back on the greatest era in the history of Rangers, one which came up short, ended in failure and then destroyed them. I hope they enjoy it. The best is behind them. Ours might yet be in front of us.

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