“PENALTY TO RANGERS?” NAH. EURO TANTRUMS RING HOLLOW FOR CELTIC FANS
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- Apr 18
- 3 min read
If you’ve been following Scottish football for any length of time, then I’m going to assume you’ve become familiar with the concept of Schadenfreude.
Basically, it’s the art of taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.
Yeah, it says something about the German sense of humor that they could distill such a concept into a single word.
Anyway, at the rate things are going, soon, the Anglo-German dictionary will have to update the meaning of this word. May I suggest they simply put; “See also: Rangers FC”.
Celtic Fans Offer No Sympathy, We’ve Been Down this Road Too Often
So, in case you’ve been in hibernation for the last 12 hours or so, Rangers got knocked out of Europe last night.
May I be the first to offer a sincere and heartfelt “Zorionak” to our friends and comrades in The Basque Country.
As usual with Rangers, it’s never just a defeat. There’s always some ready-made excuse, some manufactured, conspiracy-driven narrative as to why they didn’t win.
Over the last few months, I’ve laughed as the various message boards frequented by their fans have blamed one ridiculous cause after another for their team’s rank rotten performances on the park.
Apparently, Celtic aren’t about to win the league because we are a better football team.
According to some of the denizens of “Follow, Follow” our impending league win is the result of grand spider’s web of conspiracy and intrigue, involving, among others, “The SFA, The SPFL, The SNP, The Vatican, Peter Lawwell (not the Celtic board, just Peter Lawwell specifically for some reason), and, apparently, The Jews.”
And there’s me thinking it was just because Rangers have been p*sh this season.
Anyway, looking back at last night’s game specifically, the cry (apart from “we surrender”) is “we should have had a penalty”.
Now, I’ve watched the incident back. Is the Rangers’ forward’s shirt pulled? Yes, it is. The problem is that Cyrille Dessers is already on his way to the ground before he gets touched, so in my opinion, no penalty. It’s borderline though.
I’ve certainly seen them given, particularly when Rangers are at home and the referee is Scottish.
Anyway, amidst all the outrage the dregs of Ibrox are forgetting one crucial factor, Athletic Club could, and probably should, have been 2 or 3 goals up by that point.
And therein lies the problem with this whole faux outrage we see plastered across the media today. Yes, Rangers probably should have had a penalty.
But they conceded two goals last night.
Had Athletic needed to score more than that to progress, you get the feeling they could have. They were on a completely different level to the minions of Ibrox.
This is the problem when a team and their accompanying fanbase become so used to getting everything their own way all the time, without question. It creates a mental disconnect.
They can’t just be beaten by a better team. In the eyes of The Rangers fans, and their amplifiers in the Scottish media, there has to be some other reason, some conspiracy.
I’ve already seen multiple fan media outlets this morning cite the fact that the Europa League final is scheduled to take place in Bilbao this season as a reasoning for why the referee “chose” not to give Rangers a penalty or red card the player who committed the offence.
Boys, you were gubbed by a better team. Deal with it.
Some say that this means Rangers season is over.
It isn’t.
They still have to play host to our title celebrations on May 4th, where the onus will be on Celtic to take care of some unfinished business of our own.
We are the best team in Scotland. That isn’t up for debate.
But the residents of Ibrox are in need of a wee reminder of this, which I believe we will provide, when the time comes.
