Last night, before I went to bed, I checked out a number of forums which were discussing our award from FIFA, Celtic forums and those of other clubs. I expected the bitterness on the Sevco forums, it was there in all its ghastly glory. But when I got up this morning I had three or four article waiting for me to read. They were just as bitter, just as angry.
The difference is, these were from mainstream newspapers.
I want to highlight two of them, in particular, as they are particularly egregious examples of what we, as a club, have to deal with. I know there will be more sniping from the sidelines on top of these, but these are absolutely undisguised.
The first is from a hack at The Mirror, the sister paper of The Daily Record, and this is a piece of absolute excreta which could have come from Follow Follow or one of the Sevco blogs. It was written by a guy called Alan Clark, who’s work is usually on English based stories. He’s not much more than a cut and paste merchant, many of his stories are just re-writes of other pieces in his own paper or elsewhere. Last night he branched out.
Even the headline is snide; “”If Celtic have best fans, PSG should win Financial Fair Play award”: Twitter reacts as Scots scoop shock Best FIFA Award.”
It opens with this line, which reeks of bitchiness.
“Celtic have the best fans in the world. Yes, you read that right!”
The whole article is written in this “OMG how did that happen?” tone. It is sarcastic. It is petty. It is a little slice of spite. Check this line out.
“Amazingly they edged out big hearted fans from Borussia Dortmund, who offered shelter for terror attack victims, and FC Copenhagen, who made a point of letting disabled fans lifting the Danish Cup, for the prize.”
Does he have a clue about the numerous charitable things our own supporters have done? Does he care? Apparently not. Written out of pure ignorance, this article then veers into a recital of our run-ins with UEFA over the last six years.
“The gong coincided with the Scottish side being handed their 12th punishment from governing body UEFA in six years.”
He then does the lazy journalist’s favourite thing; he collects a series of tweets which support the point of view he’s pushing in the headline. One of them was from Andrew Dickson, who as you can imagine didn’t exactly congratulate us.
“As you can imagine Twitter was miffed at the decision …” he writes. It sounds to me that he was quite miffed at the decision himself.
Just as cheesed off with our old friend at The Evening Times and The Herald, Martin Williams. He decided to headline his own article thus:
“Celtic win FIFA fans award for Lisbon Lions display before ‘unsafe’ flares controversy in match against Hearts.”
Williams is a serial troll. His last half a dozen sports article have all been about our club. All but one had a negative headline, and even the one was about Peter Lawwell’s salary, a subject he knows full well is a touchy one for a lot of our fans.
Since he and others at his paper enjoy giving these wee overviews of our so-called sins, let me give you the headlines of his last few pieces, the Lawwell one excepted.
“Munich police flares warning to Celtic fans travelling to Germany for big Champions League game.”
“Celtic to carry out review into Parkhead after complaints from disabled.”
“SFA refuse to budge on a review over the Rangers ‘EBT’ saga despite Celtic criticism.”
“Celtic warn fans over ‘excessive’ banners before Premiership match.”
He has also pontificated on how Brendan could be lured away from Celtic.
This is how he chose to open his piece in The Herald.
“CELTIC declared their fans officially “best in the world” after winning the FIFA Fan Award for 2017 for a 360-degree display in honour of the Lisbon Lions at an end of season match against Hearts that put the club’s safety certificate in doubt.”
Just about the whole of the article is a re-tread of the Celtic letter to The Green Brigade on the subject of flares. The rest is a recital of the same tune the rest of the media was singing about it being the day on which we received a UEFA fine.
What these people are having trouble getting through their thick heads is simple; the governing bodies know the difference between a club who’s fans cause trouble and one which occasionally gives them some. Our fans break rules? Yes, ones about flags and banners. Ones about smoke bombs and flares. We don’t riot. We are not racist.
We are not throwing objects at players … where is the media outrage over numerous incidents from a certain other Scottish club? Nowhere, that’s where.
But then that club’s fans aren’t being nominated for awards.
Want to guess why? Cause they don’t hand those out for sectarianism.
The Scottish media makes you sick at times, but on this one they have no influence at all.
The simple truth is, the rest of the world knows what we are.