DAILY RECORD CELTIC FAN HYPOCRISY LAID BARE
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Aug 9
- 2 min read
By all accounts, this was a good week for Scotland’s European Co-efficient.
First, Rangers continued to widen the gap between their European and domestic displays. The £1.49ers followed up a predictable 1-1 draw with Motherwell with an, admittedly very convincing, 3-0 skelping of Czech side Viktoria Plzen.
Daily Record Urged Celtic Fans to Back Rangers Last Week, but No Such Support for Hibs or Dundee United This Week
You could be forgiven for thinking the denizens of The Debt Star were the only Scottish side in European qualification action this week, given the hysteria that surrounded their first leg victory.
Hibs went out and did a number on Partizan Belgrade, on their own turf. Claiming a 2-0 first leg win in Serbia.
Dundee United followed this up with an even more impressive 2-2 draw away to Rapid Vienna. All three sides now have an excellent chance of making their respective play-off rounds.
Yet you wouldn’t know it, given the paucity of coverage for the two clubs based outside Glasgow.
You’ll recall the extremely patronizing Daily Record article I highlighted last week where they claimed that Celtic fans should back Rangers in Europe as it “boosts the co-efficient and is good for all Scottish football”.
Funnily enough, I didn’t see any such articles this week, telling Rangers fans to act in their own best interests and don the green of Hibs for a day. No such luck for Dundee United either, even though their “tangerine” colors might be a bit more palatable to a certain sect of the Ibrox support.
The hypocrisy is astounding, but not especially surprising. We all knew that initial article was just an attempt to stir up trouble among supporters of the two Glasgow clubs. Of course, plenty took the bait. Lots of angry rants and raves from both sides of the divide followed, giving the Record Hotline enough content to cover several days of inaction elsewhere.
Maybe now we can just drop the pretenses. Perhaps its time for the likes of the Record to just stop insulting us all by pretending they actually care about any football clubs outside of Glasgow. And let’s have no more patronizing thought pieces about the merits of backing your enemies.
I don’t like Rangers, and judging by some of the comments and messages I receive from their supporters almost every day (thanks for the ad revenue by the way), they clearly don’t like me either.
That’s football, that’s normal. Rivalry, antagonism and mockery are all par for the course. The next time we play each other, at the end of this month, I will have a veritable deluge of sarcastic salvos ready to fire off at them and their supporters, and I will no expect no less in return, from the small group of them capable of making multi-syllable sentences.
So long as it doesn’t escalate into violence or personal, individual attacks, I’m all for it. That is what football rivalry should be.
