IF UEFA’s Match Delegate At Ibrox Was Even Half Awake They Are In Bother.

Both sides of football were on full display at Ibrox on Wednesday.

We saw the ridiculous – in the form of the home team’s hapless efforts at defending – and we saw the sublime, in a six minute hat-trick from Mohammed Salah, one of the great players it has been our privilege to watch on our TV’s these last few years.

We saw the good, in the form of a Liverpool fan-base who made it clear how they felt about the monarchy and all the Brit-Nat imperialism Ibrox was revelling on for the occasion

We saw the bad and the ugly both in the Ibrox fans spiteful “Scouse rats” banner, in their despicable song-book and, at the end, in the shocking scenes as their “ultras” tried to attack the Liverpool supporters.

TV audiences didn’t see or hear half of it. But UEFA delegates are paid to observe that stuff, and if they saw and heard what actually went on then that club has a lot to worry about besides finishing bottom of the group with no points and six hidings.

For too many people in the media the “unique atmosphere of Ibrox” is presented to the world as some sort of triumph, without the least context. On a night like that, the place resembles nothing so much as a Nuremberg rally for Loyalists. Leni Riefenstahl was praised too for setting a scene, for capturing an atmosphere and for the “spectacle.”

And it was ugly and it was deranged and it was vicious and it was racist.

Nobody wants to confront these things, and I would almost forgive that. But what I won’t forgive, and what none of us should, is that they praise this stuff instead. And since nobody in any position of responsibility in the press or the chattering classes in Scotland intends to take this matter seriously we are, once again, looking to UEFA to puncture this festering boil.

And between those banners, the song-book and the fighting at the end the home fans have, once again, given them plenty to sink their teeth into. Those Peepul never learn except when they are punished.

So do us all a favour, UEFA, and get on that.