A Spanish Newspaper Has Lied About Celtic Fans And Ibrox Fan Sites Are Lapping It Up.

There are few people in this world as stupid as Ibrox fans.

Proof of it has emerged online today after a report – a shocking report – in a Spanish online journal called Mundo Deportivo, which alleged that Celtic fans were responsible for “wreaking havoc on their way through the Spanish capital” when we played Real there last season.

This is a barefaced lie. I was in Madrid last year.

No such events took place.

Let’s put it this way, if any such things had happened what do you think the reaction of the Scottish media would have been? To ignore them? Yeah, right.

We all know that wouldn’t have happened.

At the time of the game, I wrote a number of reports from the capital and aside from an incident on my first night in the city, where Spanish police charged into an area full of our fans for no reason at all and got pretty heavy handed, I saw no trouble at all.

The day of the game, they lined up in the square where our supporters were congregating and I posted some pictures of it online. You’d think they’d been preparing for a riot, and I thought it was a pretty heavy-duty response to what was, in essence, a street party.

There was not a bit of bother.

Our fans were in Madrid last month. There was no trouble except for a group of Atletico fans attacking our supporters in a bar. Our own conduct was impeccable.

I’m just back from Rome, where we played Lazio; that’s a high-risk fixture if ever there was one, and I loved every second of the trip. There was not a bit of hassle or trouble anywhere in the city that I could see.

The writer of that garbage doesn’t know what the Hell he is talking about. He’s either pulled that out of his own backside or he’s been fed very bad information.

This is a sterling example of what I mean when I say that you need to remember that other countries have their own Keith Jackson’s. Clueless dolts who when they have no actual news to write will invent some. I can say with total assurance that the guy who wrote that is talking crap.

Madrid was one of my favourite experiences as a Celtic fan. It was a beautiful, welcoming and friendly place. The allegation that we “wreaked havoc” is nonsensical.

Of course, the Ibrox fan site in question believes every word.

Not because they know anything concrete, but because any allegation about Celtic fans, however specious, however ridiculous, is music to their ears.

They are lamenting being “tarred with the same brush”; believe me, they do not need the taint of another club’s fans to make them look bad.

They will be travelling in large numbers to a predominantly Catholic country whilst chanting about fenians and fenian blood and the Vatican and whatever else their despicable minds came come up with.

I am perfectly willing to condemn Celtic fans when that is appropriate. There is a section of our support which seems to thrill in letting down the rest of us.

But the reason we have such an outstanding reputation across Europe is that the vast, vast majority of us are not like that at all. When we travel abroad to watch our team, we do so to enjoy ourselves, not to leave the locals with the kind of bad memories they won’t soon forget.

The Betis-Sevco fixture has been labelled high-risk.

Not for nothing.

Because it’s their fans, not ours, who have the history of trashing Spanish cities and fighting with Spanish police. It goes back a long way too; Pamplona, Villareal, Barcelona … we all know their sordid history on Spanish soil. We know about their bigotry and racism right here at home.

Their own reputation precedes them. If their game is being branded a high-risk fixture that will be why. As usual they want to blame Celtic for something, but in this case all they’ve got to fall back on are the ignorant words of a Spanish hack who makes Hugh Keevins sound like a master of research and wisdom.

Not a great basis on which to build an argument.