I learned something new this morning.
UEFA observers read The Record. They also phone the Hotline, or as I sometimes like to call it, the Lost The Plot Line. It a repository for the bad and the pure and simple mad. It is filled to the rafters with lunatics, and that’s just the moderators.
But apparently, amidst those loonies there are people with real heft, real weight, real power in the game. How else to explain the Newsnow screaming headline which promises that “Celtic Will Be Banned By UEFA Next Time If Green Brigade Behaviour Continues?”
Yes, it’s a Hotline headline … but really?
Are we now giving over headlines to people who literally foam at the mouth, folk who’s own hate has morphed into such blatant, and hysterical, wishful thinking?
Because either the Record has decided that the promotion of such braindead nonsense is to be put on the same level as Actual News, or the European governing body has approved its own officials phoning daft local newspapers.
And I rather suspect that’s not the case.
I do love all these “experts” on European football trying to teach Celtic fans about truth and consequences. I understand why they don’t grasp the situations correctly; truth is an alien word to them … and consequences … haha don’t even get me started.
UEFA conducted more than just one disciplinary yesterday; one of the more notable (ours was barely even a footnote piece) was the decision in the HNK Hajduk Split and PFC Levski Sofia case, which was a Europa League match.
Both sides were sanctioned but Split were disciplined for the racist behaviour of their fans as well as the throwing of objects.
The fine was £5000.
The punishment – or the consequences rather, if you’ll permit – were the closure of the stadium, one closed-door tie, when they are next in Europe.
I put it to you that Sevco is in far greater danger of one day (if they survive that long) getting a stadium closure than Celtic is and I’ve not based that on idiotic assumptions or some Sevconut blowing out candles on a birthday cake, eyes shut, saying “Please ban Celtic from Europe … please ban Celtic from Europe … “ but on actual prior precedent.
But no-one bothered to bring that case to the attention of the Hotline, probably because it would have been a waste of time, because the people who phone that and the people who man it are the sort you find still sitting in a dingy backstreet boozer way after last orders, because they’ve pissed away all their money and don’t want to walk home.