As I wrote earlier today, Celtic’s players are facing a potentially ruinous summer as the SFA, for reasons known only to their useless leaders, has arranged two international friendly matches for the summer, when our players will be recovering from a long season.
I thought our club should tell the SFA in advance that it wasn’t on and that our footballers would not be taking part in these ludicrous vanity exercises. It is typical of how the SFA does things that our national team does not as yet have a manager; their scrambling around chasing Michael O’Neill ended in failure today. But still these matches, which the next international boss might not even fancy, are pencilled in. You could not make this up.
But the impact on club teams facing European qualifiers is the larger issue. With Celtic facing a mind-numbing and soul-sapping eight games to qualify for the Champions League Groups we needed these games like a submarine needs a revolving door.
There are players at our club who haven’t had a good break in the last couple of years.
This does not help.
Then again, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it isn’t supposed to.
Today Celtic reacted to these games and the punishing schedule they create.
Scott Brown, in perhaps the understatement of the year, said the timing “won’t benefit Celtic players.”
That’s one way to put it.
Chris Davies said the games were “not ideal” and that the manager would have his own thoughts and would deal with the matter closer to the time.
I can only interpret this as “Brendan is pissed off.”
I know people will moan if he say our players are not taking part in those games. We’ll get the typical wailing out of certain corners of the media and Sevconia about disloyalty; they can lecture us on that when the moon turns to cheese.
I lost count of the number of players from the former Ibrox operation who routinely pulled out of Scotland squads and then there was the small matter of a manager who walked out of the national team to “live the dream” back at Ibrox.
Their pitiful whining ought not to be a factor in what we decide to do, and I’m sure that it won’t be. These ingrates don’t recognise our contribution to football in this country, or they don’t care about it. Either way, they don’t get to guilt us into playing ball this time.
I expect Brendan will tell them that our players will be on holiday and that he doesn’t want them picked. I expect our players to go off and enjoy their break without even a backwards glance. The next Scotland manager can take that however he likes; my guess is that he’s going to need Celtic and our players more than we need him so he can like it or lump it but there’s not a whole lot he or his feeble bosses at Hampden will be able to do about it either way.
As I said before, we don’t owe the association any loyalty or respect whatsoever.
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