Sad Day

[f4f3]

I was planning at least a mention this morning of Rangers defeat last night in the EUFA cup final – the hysteria in Glasgow, the amount of cars I saw flying the Saltire, as opposed to the Union flag (tiny, but very significant), the drunk Rangers fan I spoke to outside my flat, who could only sob “I could have fallen to my knees”, the crowd trouble in Manchester – I might even have made capital of that, and compared it to Celtic fans’ behaviour in Seville a few years back.

But I heard on the way in to work that Tommy Burns, Celtic’s team coach and past manager, a long time part of the national team’s coaching set-up and a playing hero of my youth, has died from cancer at the age of 52.

It puts the “tragedies” of the game in context, and this is a bad day for Scottish football all the way round.

Comments

[nicnac.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. One of my mates got punched in the face through his car window in Manchester last night :o( What is it about football that leads to such violence?

Sorry to hear you have lost one of your heroes.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Ah, that is a shame. A good man.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I'm going to take some stick for saying this, but I don't believe it's true of football in general leads to violence. Some teams have more violent fans than others, and Rangers are one of those teams.

The only direct comparison is with Celtic (since they're the only Scottish team to play as many games outside Scotland) and with the national team.

In the last few years Celtic have played in Manchester, Blackburn and at least one other English city. As far as I know, there was no trouble.They took around 70,000 fans to Seville for the UEFA final, and, again, no trouble.

Scotland's national team have played in France, Italy, Croatia and several other European locations, taking anything from a couple of thousand to 30,000 fans, with no real trouble.

Some teams have a more militaristic, thuggish culture - some fans are even proud of it. I know this sounds biased coming from a Celtic fan, but I really do think that Rangers fans are more accepting of that culture.

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

That's a sad and true observation.

In the meantime:

I was also charmed by the photo of the salute by the Zenit St. Petersburg fans in the Guardian gallery (arms out straight at a 45 degree angle...). Not sure what the context/history of that gesture is for SP, but as seen there it doesn't look very good.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I did have some wry chuckles about sectarian Rangers throwing mud at racist Zenit...

Rangers came in for a lot of flack last year about their fans throwing what looked like nazi salutes. Their explanation that these were only emphasing their "No Surrender" songs didn't go over too well...

[anthrokeight.livejournal.com]

Speaking of being dumb-asses.