I’m on holiday this week, and last night as the plane prepared to land in the Canary Islands my brother in law motioned to me from his seat just in front of mine that it was 2-0.
At first I had no idea what he was talking about; what the Hell was 2-0? I didn’t connect that to the Sevco result attt all; I thought, in fact, he might be talking about Linfield, that they had crashed out of Europe and removed all need for us to be concerned with that tie.
Instead, as he took great delight in telling me and half of the plane, it was Sevco who had burst into flames shortly after clearing the runway.
All the perfidy, all the bending of the rules, people in authority mortgaging our integrity to get this ghastly football club into European football and for all the hype that had surrounded the Glasgow Galacticos it had ended after one tie, in blazing wreckage, in utter, abject, glorious humiliation.
For this is without a shadow of a doubt the worst result in their short history, it is the worst in the long timeline of the Ibrox operation and the worst ever suffered by a Scottish club on the continent. Don’t let anyone kid you about Lincoln Red Imps; last night that was eclipsed, utterly.
We qualified from that tie, easily.
Red Imps themselves are record breaking multiple tie title winners … Progres had never won a European tie, had never suffered anything short of a multi-goal defeat over two legs, and last season they finished fourth. In Luxembourg.
That result has no parallel. No humiliation ever suffered by a Scottish club comes remotely close to it and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise over the course of this week.
Much of the weekend was spent with most of us in disbelief at Caixinha’s incredibly crass dressing room decisions … it’s just like that club to ban green boots but make clown feet mandatory. For all of us who had to stomach a summer of the most rampant nonsense, and on top of that this “We Are The People” garbage, this is breathtakingly hilarious.
So let the paint whatever ludicrous slogan on the walls over there that they want; let it put a balm on this gaping wound, let them kid themselves on that they are special … last night the Speshul Peepul were knocked out of Europe and the whole notion of themselves as a big club has circled the drain and swirled down the plug-hole.
It’s time for them to stop with the delusions of grandeur; they are a joke and this morning all of Europe is laughing at them. I know everyone on my plane was last night.
And for Caixinha and the Great Experiment … well I’m going to take some time out later in the week to go over that in detail, yes, even from this glorious sunshine, where I can work happily (and believe me, happiness is exactly the present emotion; you have no idea) with a beer in my hand and take a long look at the utter shambles unfolding at home.
To all intents and purposes it’s over though. As I knew the countdown clock had started for Warburton after his team was ruthlessly dismantled at Tynecastle I know Sevco’s criminal chairman can’t stand for this and that Pedro Caixinha is finished at Ibrox already … no-one can survive that.
To borrow a phrase from political discourse, he just lost his mandate. His credibility is shot and there’s zero prospect of recovery.
The task of getting over a result like that will take years; their supporters will be telling their Celtic supporting grandkids about last night.
And oh how we laughed. And we keep on laughing.
The gift that keeps on giving has given me the very best start to my holiday that I could have dreamed of. And yes, I celebrated it and will continue to.