Last night Aberdeen put on a show for their traveling fans and got through their tricky Europa League qualifier. I was pleased for them, and for Scottish football which has taken a real rollicking in the past few weeks due mostly to the utter uselessness of the Sevco team which floundered in Luxembourg and crashed out in the worst result a team from this country has had on the continent in the history of the game.
We all needed the lift last night; Celtic beating Linfield was good for our fans, but it was hardly a great shock. Here’s hoping both clubs get through the next rounds.
Aberdeen players will be thrilled at the prospect of playing more matches in the competition.
They know that it’s big for their clubs, and for their own development as players. They know that the revenue these ties bring in – for what little there is at these early stages – is nevertheless important and worthy of the effort.
But these games do more than that.
They are about exposure for clubs and for Scottish football as a whole, which is why the shame of Sevco’s Luxembourg humiliation with be with them for years to come. The task of getting over that night isn’t one that’ll be done within a few days or weeks. Not even months. It will impact on everything they do and on how they are viewed round the world.
Take all those English commentators who do nothing but spout nonsense about what a massive club the Ibrox side are, confusing them with Rangers. No-one’s confusing them with a big club anymore, are they? They are now the side that crashed to a team rated outside the European top 400.
That is a shameful fact. It’s one there’s just no erasing.
Which brings me to Bruno Alves and his assertions to the media yesterday that he doesn’t care about European football and didn’t come to Ibrox for it.
Good job that, isn’t it?
It’s nonsense, of course. He certainly believed the hype. He was certainly sold on the vision of this club as being one that was on its way to the peak of Scottish football before eying the landscape beyond. What a joke. Imagine saying that stuff isn’t important?
Europe is everything to that club over there. Their entire “business plan” – no laughing, please – is predicated on it. That defeat has left them shell-shocked. Had they known they were going to get one paltry home tie out of it (not on the season books either; quality piece of fleecing the fans there Mr King, bravo to you sir, bravo) my guess is they wouldn’t have spent as much as they have on their team. They now have no way to pay for it.
Alves is saying all the right stuff, if what you mean by that is the kind of stuff that has Celtic fans falling about laughing and the Sevconuts losing their minds. He’s asked that Pedro be given “time.” I agree with him. The next four years anyway.
In the meantime, McInnes is preparing his team for the next challenge on the continent.
Funny how things work out sometimes, isn’t it?