NO, CELTIC FANS DON’T NEED TO CHEER FOR RANGERS IN EUROPE, NO MATTER WHAT THE MEDIA SAYS
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
You’ve probably guessed, from some of my writing, that I had no great love for Rangers FC (Requiescat in Pace) nor do I have any affection for their current incarnation, The Govan £1.49ers, or whatever they’re calling themselves this week.
That’s not bigotry, that’s not hatred. That’s rivalry. I don’t like them; they don’t like us. That’s football.
So, when I saw the Daily Record and a number of other sites joining in on a chorus of “Rangers’ progress in Europe is good for Celtic, so Celtic fans should get behind them”, I found myself saying: “Uh, no, I don’t think I’ll be doing that.
Wishing Failure Upon Teams You Don’t Like Doesn’t Make Celtic Fans “Bigots”
This is just a more localized version of the same tripe Scottish football fans get subjected to every time there’s a major international tournament and, as usual, Scotland don’t qualify but England do.
There seems to be a whole sub-genre these days of soundbites and news articles asking various Scottish, Welsh and Irish celebrities and fans “Will you be supporting England at the World Cup?” every 4 years.
For the record, no I won’t, and mostly for the same reasons I won’t be supporting Rangers.
I don’t like the arrogance of their fans. I don’t like the toxic, aggressively British nationalism that attaches itself to a large element of those respective fanbases, and perhaps most of all, I detest the supremacist, often racist attitudes we see from these same supporters.
Now, would Celtic’s qualification pathway, as League Champions, become easier in the years ahead if Rangers made the Champions League Group Stage?
Yeah probably.
But at the end of the day, if we can’t beat the kinds of teams we need to beat to get to the group stages on our own merits, then we probably have no business being there in the first place.
Plus, do Celtic fans really want our closest challengers for the aforementioned league championship to get the massive cash injection that comes with Champions League Group stage participation?
No, I don’t think we do.
If the trade-off is that we have to start our European campaign a few weeks earlier in the years to come, then I’ll gladly take that, pour myself a nice wee glass of wine and sit back and watch Rangers get skelped in Europe.
It looks, after the first leg anyway, as if they will probably get past Panathinaikos. Apologies to viewers of yesterday’s ACSOM Bulletin, I called that one wrong.
Back on point though, my own belief is that so long as the distain you have for other clubs never surpasses your own love for your own team, then that’s perfectly fine.
Besides, Rangers are hardly unique when it comes to clubs on my personal footballing “sh*t list”.
You can add Lazio, Hamburg, Millwall, Zenit St Petersburg, Urawa Reds and Beitar Jerusalem to that list of clubs for starters. Whilst I’m not overly excited either way, I would definitely cheer for their opposition if they were playing a game on the telly.
If there’s a few other clubs with racist fan bases that I’ve forgotten about then you can probably add them in too.
We all have teams we don’t like. Most of the time in my case, it’s about the political leanings of those clubs and their major supporters’ groups. For you it might be something else entirely.
It doesn’t matter. The point is, rivalry is healthy in sport. It’s what makes football the spectacle it is. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a health dose of schadenfreude when it comes to watching, and occasionally laughing at, Rangers in Europe.