ENGLAND usually has four or even five teams in the Champions League. This year they have Liverpool, the two Manchester sides, and Chelsea and Tottenham from London.
All five of these clubs have major traveling supports. The Spurs fans were certainly vocal enough in Madrid earlier this week.
All as far as we know like a drink or two on a European trip. Where is the harm in that?
Do the local newspapers in Liverpool, Manchester and London report of the litter left behind in the centre of the cities these English fans visit.
There’s certainly no evidence to suggest that they do.
Then there is Celtic, the only Scottish club still in existence to play in the Champios League, and the Evening Times story.
Over on Celtic Quick News this morning there was a report about the Munich Police thanking the Celtic supporters for their good behaviour in Munich and pointing out that there had been a great atmosphere with no trouble whatsoever. There was not one single arrest.
The Police also pointed out that there were no bins placed at the Marienplatz, the main square where visiting fans to Munich always gather, due to security issues. Fair enough.
The Marienplatz was cleared of all rubbish and back to normal within an hour of the Celtic fans heading for the stadium. This was all planned and managed with typical German efficiency. It was not an issue for anyone. The Munich Police said so here:
Something similar would have happened the night before in Madrid for the Tottenham fans. No big deal. Nothing mentioned in the Evening Standard.
Yet Celtic fans are the subject of a petty, small minded dig in the evening paper that strives to serve the people of Glasgow, the Evening Times.
There’s the story taken from The Sun about some Celtic fans at Manchester airport apparently singing ‘oh ah up the ra’ as an add on to a Celtic song. No-one was offended by this, except the ‘Celtic watchers’ on Rangers forum. This video first came to light on one such forum, pretty much as soon as it was loaded to You Tube, by an ‘offended’ Rangers supporter who even claimed that the Celtic fans were singing a song about ISIS.
Not one but two newspapers operating out of Glasgow ran this as a major story.
Then there’s the video, which was used by CQN in their match report on Wednesday night, which featured some German Celtic supporters getting involved in a German Sky interview with a young female Celtic supporter. The German Bhoys are heard singing a few lines from an old rebel song.
To Celtic supporters this is rather amusing, nothing more.
It would have offended no-one watching the match on the German Sky channel, it would have amused many.
But The Evening Times jump on this as more evidence of Bhoys behaving badly.
They lump in in with the Manchester “ISIS” video and the disgraceful scenes of empty bottles, cans and sandwich wrappers in the Marienplatz to paint an unfair and entirely negative picture on the Celtic supporters trip to Munich.
A trip where 10,000 travelled.
None were arrested.
The Munich police, Bayern Munich as a club and the Munich fans and local residents were entertained and enjoyed the visit from the noisy, colourful Celts. None of that is mentioned in the Evening Times article which reads like something from Follow Follow ( a site that today praises the said Evening Times article).
Yet they find one line in one newspaper where someone calls Celtic fans ‘piglets’ for the mess left in the Marienplatz, a mess that was there because the German authorities took away all the bins due for safety reasons.
We have no idea how much the Evening Times charges for its newspaper these days. And we have little to no interest in finding out if that is their report on what was overwhelmingly positive experience for 10,000 traveling supporters who made friends in Munich.
Meanwhile here are some other images, mostly from music festivals, where there is a clean up needed after the revelers have departed.
Not newsworthy are they?
You see, you need to have Celtic involved apparently before rubbish is big news.
