Tag: SPFL

Moan the Hoops redux

Forgive me for repeating this theme from a past blog post from a while ago, but once again it has come up in the most annoying manner. A perfect example of this was during the first half of Wednesday’s game at Celtic Park against St. Mirren, when you had the usual Greek chorus of whiners and moaners acting as if they were climbing to the highest building in Glasgow, ready to throw themselves off.

Let me be clear: Not everyone who follows Celtic falls into the category of the Moan the Hoops Brigade.

Thank God.

But you know who you are, and Witchy speaks for me here:

Yeah, sit doon . . .

Before I start, let me interject a personal social-media aside: If you were to do a pie chart of the people I have blocked on Twitter, you’d have more than half a pie’s worth of Celtic “fans” who constantly bitch and moan, regardless of the outcome, and/or who say stupid things about either players or the club. I’m not your babysitter, and I’m not the nimrod whisperer.

To me, blocking people who claim to support the same club is sad. A club like Celtic should always be held to a higher standard, and I don’t think it’s too much to expect Celtic fans posting on social media to not act like privileged, spoiled children who expect flawless performances and 5-0 victories every time the Bhoys take the pitch.

And I get it. That’s way too much to ask of people on social media, I know, despite the fact that such infantile behavior should be reserved for supporters of lesser clubs. Like, oh I don’t know, Sevco comes immediately to mind.

But still, it begs the following question to these Celtic “fans.”

“Faithful through and through” are not just four words. They are a way of life. So if you insist on moaning and greeting halfway through a game in which Celtic ultimately prevails, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?

Earlier in the season, people were slagging Greg Taylor. Well, Taylor’s doing pretty well as of late — not that he wasn’t before. Was he stellar? No. Is he now? Not really. But has he gotten — and does he now get — the job done? Absolutely.

Then the boo-birds focused on Carl Starfelt. Admittedly, Starfelt took a little more time than usual to get his footing in the hammerthrowing realm of the SPFL, but he has since grown into the role he’s been given in the Celtic defense. But now every time Starfelt makes a mistake, there’s a phenomenal hue and cry about him being a “bombscare.”

These folks have short memories. We won a treble with Jeremy Toljan starting for a good part of that season in defense.

Jeremy Toljan. So when you’re complaining about Celtic’s defense, which statistically one of the best in the SPFL this season, you might want to keep that in mind.

Then after even more blocks on Twitter, it seems that the Moan the Hoops Brigade has now started to focus on Daizen Maeda. To be honest, I haven’t seen this, but I have seen replies to posts I can’t see (since the original poster is blocked) defending Maeda from what can best be described as faulty analysis.

Daijobu desu, Daizen-san: You didn’t have a good day on Wednesday, but you’ll bounce back. No matter what the Moan the Hoops Brigade says . . .

Common sense dictates that you can’t score if you don’t get the ball, and with the exception of one pass against St. Mirren on Wednesday, Maeda’s not really getting good opportunities to score like he did earlier in the season. Chances are this situation will correct itself with time, but you’d never know it listening to some offering their misguided opinions.

Celtic already faces standard issue and unjust hurdles in its everyday existence. There’s an unobjective sports media in Scotland — mere stenographers masquerading as journalists — that consistently paints the club in a false light, regardless of the club’s performance. There’s a corps of SPFL referees, unironically sponsored by SpecSavers, who consistently make “honest mistakes” that hamstring the club’s performance; the same referees who give their cross-town rival every advantage imaginable.

As if that isn’t enough, do you really want to add to the mix the nonsense from the Moan the Hoops Brigade?

Despite having to play an entire league of clubs who would just as soon “park the bus” and play, like Livingston, some variation of a 10-0-0 formation where opposing players essentially put out lawn chairs in their half of the pitch, Celtic still leads the league by three points.

Apparently, that’s not good enough for some.

It’s a classic dichotomy: I’m more than proud to be a Celtic fan, but at the same time I’m also more than ashamed by some of the shitbaggery proffered by some who claim to love the club.

One more thing

How good ideas go south, and quickly: Apparently, it seems that the Australians are setting up for a train wreck by having Celtic and Sevco play this November in a tournament in Sydney, in what’s being billed as the Sydney Super Cup.

We know how Sevco fans travel and acts at road games. History is pretty clear there, and in fact they’re called Huns for exactly their past behavior. So why they’re being included in this tournament when they could have easily included another club — and choices could have been Ange Postecoglou’s former club, Yokohama F Marinos in Japan, or maybe even the best of Australia’s lower division — is a complete mystery.

Let’s hope the Sydney riot squad is on top of their game when the scum of the earth visit later this year.

Mon (not Moan) the Hoops.

Dear SPFL: My work is done here

That’s all for me.

I’m out.

Organizing guru and bestselling author Marie Kondo says — and I’m paraphrasing here — that if something doesn’t bring you joy, you should toss it.

With that in mind, I am tossing Scottish football.

Scottish football is unwatchable. It is nowhere near worth the effort of putting in two hours of my life on a weekend or weekday to watch when, more times than not, even in a Celtic victory — like the one against Alloa on Saturday, which is the final straw after many other instances — it does not provide satisfaction.

Life is too short to watch unfair, corrupt, bad football. And Scottish football, whether it’s the SPFL or the underleagues, has created an environment where hammerthrowers thrive in high numbers, where officials at all levels are either too corrupt or too stupid (and possibly both) to provide a even a halfway decent product on the pitch, and where sports hacks of the mainstream sports media — no one outside Scotland would ever consider them real journalists — would rather pad their wallets than provide the public with the truth.

To say nothing of the leadership in the upper leagues, who are blind to a situation in which their league spirals into backwater oblivion in the eyes of the world outside of their borders.

In a worldwide market where football fans have a wide choice of quality football from around the world to choose from, Scotland does itself no favors by acting like everything is fine and actively ignoring these glaring problems.

Problems which the Bundesliga doesn’t have.

Problems which LaLiga doesn’t have.

Problems which the Eredivisie, the Allsvenskan, or Ligue 1 don’t have.

Problems which even the MLS doesn’t have.

I love Celtic and I think that Ange Postecoglou is on the right track. There’s a good chance another treble is in the works this season, miraculously, and it’s my sincerest hope that this transpires. It would be poetic justice in the face of the constant abuse in the form of attacks on our players on the pitch while referees look the other way, and the bleatings of so-called “journalists” covering matches, who are spoon-fed nonsense that they transcribe as if they were stenographers.

I’ll keep watching Celtic, and rooting for them. I will still suit up every game as I always do when I watch. But where once I looked forward to game day, now it has become a chore; what was once a welcome event has become a two-hour visit to the garden of Gethsemane.

I’m through with having to watch Celtic playing both the 11 men parked on their end of the pitch and the four so-called objective officials who, maybe not so ironically, have SpecSavers on their sleeve.

I’m through having to temper any joy in victory with dealing with a casualty count, while literal assailants go unpunished and, in some circles, praised.

I’m through with watching one SPFL club get preferential treatment in every game, while every other club in the Premiership — including Celtic — sits idly by and says nothing.

This behavior may play to rave reviews there at home. But bear in mind that the rest of the world is laughing at you.

And that’s the worst, and saddest, part about it: Hands are thrown up and it’s just accepted as “our fate” or “our lot in life” that it has to be this way, because it has always been this way.

I’ve turned comments off. This is pretty much non-negotiable. If the Scottish game perchance ends up improving, becoming more fair and objective in its officiating, and providing the quality that is truly there — groaning under the sheer tonnage of graft, hypocrisy and greed that would stun a team of oxen — I would fight to be the first to sing its praises.

But I think I have a better chance of seeing Nessie pop up out of Loch Ness. From my couch.

So long, SPFL. Good luck. And, as always, Mon the Hoops.

Ange and the press

One of the most remarkable facets of Celtic’s season so far has not been any particular performance on the pitch, but rather Ange Postecoglou’s performance off it, specifically dealing with the Scottish sports media.

Ange Postecoglou’s performance behind the microphone is one of several breaths of fresh air for Celtic FC this season.

Apparently, the Australian gaffer has taken to heart the words of warning from The Celtic Star’s editor when the gaffer met with non-mainstream media — that’s us, the bloggers and podcasters and the like — early in the season, when Postecoglou was told at the outset he’d have rough sailing with the Scottish mainstream media’s sports writers.

Coupled with the fact that, collectively, the sports writers and pundits in the Scottish press have the unique distinction of being a bigger joke than the SPFL officiating — clearly no small feat there — and Postecoglou’s performances behind the microphone have been, to this day, flawless.

On a personal note, the news media is something I know a little about. Until 2014 when I was part of the last layoff at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, I had been in news field — in various capacities and on two continents — since the day Jimmy Carter was inaugurated president. That would be 20 January 1977, for those of you keeping score at home.

That said, I think I speak with a degree of authority on the topic when I say, by any journalistic standard, the bias in both the reporting and punditry in Scotland when it comes to professional football is an embarrassment only eclipsed by the state of disrepair in the game itself. On all levels — from the daily newspapers to the BBC, initials which can now easily stand for “Billy Boys Channel” — the nature of distrust that, ironically, has replaced the hallmark of journalistic integrity serves as a cautionary tale not only in football, but the news industry’s role in society as a whole.

The fact that Ange Postecoglou is not having any of it is absolutely refreshing. Compare any Postcoglou press conference with that of his predecessor, whose fumbling through the questions was literally painful, and you can see that the Celtic manager is all business, all the while not suffering the media’s fools — of which, unfortunately, there are many. Ange’s straightforward manner and tell-it-like-it-is addressing of questions that are completely nonsensical is a breath of fresh air in the staleness that has become commonplace in SPFL coverage.

Celtic did themselves a favor — and can continue to do so — by allowing more access to non-mainstream media outlets in order to provide a more balanced and nuanced coverage of the club; coverage that is, and has been, clearly lacking in the mainstream media.

But meanwhile, there is this: Angeball is great, but Angepress is better.

Anyway, tomorrow we have Ferencvarosi TC at Celtic Park at the odd Tuesday kickoff time of 3 p.m. (7 a.m. here on the U.S. West Coast), so I hope we can grab a win in this Europa match.

One more thing

Speaking of the Europa League, one of Celtic’s opponents in the current group — Bayer Leverkusen — had its lunch eaten by Bayern Munich yesterday in their Bundesliga match, when Bayern scored five in the first half. I watched another match yesterday while that one was going on — Hammarby and AIK in the Allsvenskan, the Stockholm Derby featuring ex-Celt Mikael Lustig, which Hammarby won 1-0 — but thanks to the modern miracle of ESPN+, I was able to watch a replay of the first half of the Bayer-Bayern game.

Putting aside for a moment that Bayern is near perfection when it comes to 90 minutes of football or that even I could manage Bayern to the Bundesliga championship with their depth of talent, Leverkusen goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky — a proverbial thorn in Celtic’s side as of late — really couldn’t be faulted for the first three goals which seemed to come from woeful defensive miscues, while the other two could be placed squarely on his shoulders. There was even one Celtic-like Bayern shot that glanced off the post, so it could have been 6-0 easily at the first half.

The point here is that while Leverkusen could be Celtic’s strongest opponent in our Europa League group, Hradecky’s bad day at the office should not be misconstrued as anything but that, and Die Werkself are still an overwhelming adversary in advancing to the next stage.

Mon the Hoops!

Dear Neil Doncaster . . .

[Blogger’s note: I wrote this letter yesterday, put it down before going to sleep, and picked it up again this morning. After making a few changes, I printed it out and put it in the mail only a few minutes ago — great timing since my letter carrier arrived at the same time I was heading to the post office — and depending on how our damaged United States Postal Service (led by a Trump appointee) handles the letter, it may make it to Scotland sometime within the two or three weeks. However, here is the letter, verbatim.]

4 October 2021

Neil Doncaster, Chief Executive Officer
The Scottish Professional Football League
Hampden Park
Glasgow G42 9DE
Scotland

Dear Mr. Doncaster:

As a matter of introduction, my name is Larry Cafiero, and I am a football fan in the United States who has followed the Scottish Professional Football League since 2017 in my capacity as a supporter of one of its member clubs, Celtic FC. Insofar as my experience as a fan may be limited compared to others who may have followed the football in your league for much longer, allow me nonetheless to point out a situation that needs your immediate attention.

Mr. Doncaster, you have a problem. While it’s true that we all have problems, yours affects tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions, of football fans worldwide. It’s a phenomenally huge problem that, if not addressed immediately, is certain to hemorrhage football fans outside Scotland – and possibly within Scotland as well – from following your league.

No doubt you already know this: You cannot allow the inept level of officiating to continue in the SPFL. For the sake of argument, I will merely refer to the level of skewed officiating as inept; however many, both in Scotland and elsewhere, have made a very strong and compelling case for the officiating at Scotland’s highest level to be not so much inept as much as it is corrupt.

Of course, ineptitude can include corruption, but you cannot be corrupt and inept at the same time, at least not successfully. But I digress.

It was the great Jock Stein who said, “If you’re good enough, the referee doesn’t matter.” However, contextually speaking – and this is how I, and others, interpret this quote – Stein was referring to officiating that is fair and objective in its execution. It’s beyond crystal clear that you don’t have that in the SPFL this season, and for all intents and purposes, you didn’t have it last season either.

The latest in the sky-high pile of “honest mistakes” was the red card on Hibernian’s Ryan Porteous on Sunday. Putting aside the fact that the challenge successfully separated the ball from the player in question, it bears noting that Ryan Porteous has only received two red cards in his SPFL career, both received from the same official, Nick Walsh, and both received in games where Hibernian played Rangers (source: Transfermrkt.com).

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Can you, in all honesty, tell me with a straight face that this is a coincidence, one of hundreds this season and last? Would you really try to convince me, and thousands of other football fans, that this, and so many other calls made and not made, are really just “honest mistakes”?

To list all the “honest mistakes” in Rangers’ favour this season and last would make this letter the size of the Oxford English Dictionary, so I’ll spare you. You’re welcome. But in the meantime, this situation has reached a tipping point where your league has lost most, possibly all, its officiating credibility. Needless to say, this does not reflect well on the SPFL, and its effect on casting Scottish football in a negative light spills over Scotland’s borders.

In other words, it’s not a local problem for the SPFL. It’s global.

Here’s my perspective, from 5,000 miles away: I have a larger than normal group of football-loving friends here in the United States with whom I converse, many on a daily basis, and the general consensus here on Scottish football is this: It’s corrupt, and in its corruption the SPFL is relegated to a backwater status in the eyes of many of my American contemporaries watching and following football abroad.

Even recently, an acquaintance said to me in conversation about Scottish football: “It’s a joke. I’d rather watch the Allsvenskan.” And while admittedly this comes from a guy who my friends and I describe as a “Bundesliga snob” and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with Swedish football, I had nothing concrete to point to in order to counter his argument, because he is right: The SPFL, as it stands right now, cannot be taken seriously when only one club – a nine-year-old club at that – solely benefits from what appears on the surface to be a skewed officiating policy that consistently, and without fail, rules in their favour.

The choice is yours: As the league’s chief executive, you can fix this and make Scottish football respectable again. Or you can do nothing and contribute to its continued atrophy. It’s a simple choice, and I know you’re smart enough to make the right choice.

To be realistic, if I were a gambling man I would wager that this letter doesn’t make it past your secretary. Or your secretary’s secretary, for that matter. Regardless, while I don’t have the answers, I do have what I think may be the start of one.

Let me suggest this: You may want to try employing FIFA/UEFA officials from outside Scotland to officiate SPFL games. See if that works in the way of restoring objectivity and, in the process, credibility.

It goes without saying, but it bears repeating, that this credibility would foster respect, returning Scottish football to the status it once held — and a status it deserves — as one of Europe’s best; a justified respect for the Scottish game in both Scotland and beyond.

Football fans of every SPFL club deserve the best football officiating the league can provide. Of course, that can be said for any league in any country. That’s not happening right now at Scotland’s top level.

But it can be.

It’s your move, sir.

Sincerely,

Larry Cafiero
[street address]
[city, state, post code]
[country]
[blog post address]

It’s official: The Premiership is a joke

I was so looking forward to returning from the off-season hiatus at the start of the Scottish Premiership season yesterday and reporting whatever observations and insights I might have about the game at Swinecastle — sorry, Tynecastle — against the Diet Huns of Heart of Midlothian.

But I can’t. Instead, I have to play Captain Obvious and point out to everyone an emperor-has-no-clothes moment in Scottish football.

Specifically, the Premiership of the Scottish Professional Football League is a joke — and not even a good one, at that — primarily because of its lack of objectivity in its officiating now running on its second season of “honest mistakes” (and arguably it goes back further). And while you may want to note that the issue may be all well and good in Scotland around this, where the woefully spoon-fed Scottish dictation corps — sorry, I mean the Scottish mainstream media — would just as soon sweep it under the rug and point out there’s a new Page 3 girl.

But the rest of the world is laughing at you and pointing, Scotland, and that’s before many are turning away and tuning out from your brand of football to watch leagues that are more fair.

I know, I know. Jock Stein said that, “If you’re good enough, the referee doesn’t matter.” But yesterday, even Big Jock had to have been looking down from above on the games yesterday and saying, “Holy shit, are you kidding me?”

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Offside: Celtic


Oh, just ignore that JamTart in the circle, who clearly has Celtic winger Leil Abada onside. Apparently he’s invisible. Leil scored on this play . . . not, as it was called for offside. And let’s go to the argument-du-jour about this: Nimrods far and wide are saying, “Well, his arm is offside.” Seriously? An appendage that has nothing to do with the game? Here, have a cookie and go outside and play. In traffic.

Not offside: Rangers

Truth in advertising: I had learned to count around 1960, so it goes without saying that I have a pretty solid grasp of numbers and their concept insofar as counting things. And here, it appears to me — and probably anyone else looking at the photo — that three Rangers players are in the next post code before the free kick is taken. Offside? Don’t make me laugh — it’s Rangers.

Of course, the example of “honest mistakes” goes far beyond these two yesterday, and the scores that transpired last season, or the hundreds in seasons prior to that. But the fact that nothing has been done about it makes this a national disgrace.

What is to be done?

Well, there are options here. What might be done is that Dominic McKay and Ange Postecoglou could go down to the SPFL offices, kick down Neil Doncaster’s office door, and beat the shit out of him every time there’s an “honest mistake.” But I’m not asking for the world here, despite the barbarian appeal of marching through Glasgow with Doncaster’s head at the end of a stick.

[OK, calm down. I’m joking. No football executives were harmed during the writing of the previous paragraph.]

But what McKay and Postecoglou — and our do-nothing board and club office leadership, if it’s really not too much to ask of them — could do is to go to the mat, so to speak, in a very vocal and concerted way for fairness each and every time this kind of thing happens. We surely can’t be alone in this situation — when Rangers get the benefit of each and every call in their games, the other 11 clubs have to wonder why they aren’t being treated fairly. If they don’t, their fans certainly do.

McKay, Postecoglou, and Celtic need to take this case to the Scottish Football Association if, and more importantly when, necessary.

McKay, Postecoglou, and Celtic need to take this case to UEFA if, and more importantly when, necessary.

Our fans have taken up the mantle, at least, with a social media effort to point out each and every “mistake” the officials make, and hammer them on it. This is a good first step that needs to be followed with the backing of the higher-ups in the club.

The only benefit to living 5,000 miles away from Celtic — the only benefit, actually — is that distance offers a perspective that one who lives in Scotland may not have because you’re too close to it. Fans in the U.S. are already tuning out Scottish football for more prestigious leagues, which is a tragedy that doesn’t have to happen and can be fixed.

One more thing

Overall, the Bhoys looked fairly good on Saturday, even though they were playing against Hearts and the officials. Both Carl Starfelt and Kyogo Furuhashi looked OK — not great, but not bad — in their first introduction to the Scottish game, despite Starfelt’s gaffe that almost resulted in an own goal. Reminds me of another Swede who struggled in his first game as a Celt . . . Henrik something, I think his name was. It’ll come to me. Clearly all the pieces aren’t in place yet (and not to beat a dead horse, although yes, we know why), but most of them are, and chances are the Hoops will hit their stride sooner moreso than later.

Mon the Hoops!

Magnificent 7

Talk about announcing your presence with authority . . .

Celtic took to the pitch on Saturday to start the season and showed no mercy to St. Johnstone, taking a 7-0 victory from the Saints and establishing the tone for the season. The Celtic scoring tells only part of the story:

Mikey Johnston 9; Ryan Christie 26, 30, 68; Olivier Ntcham 73; Odsonne Edouard 80; Leigh Griffiths 87.

By now, no doubt, you’ve all read the reports about the game. I won’t repeat that here. But I did want to put out a few observations about the game.

Crisp passing contributed greatly to the Celts phenomenal 75 percent possession rate during the course of the game. Ball-handling during the last several games has been nearly flawless, and Saturday you had essentially a clinic on possession.

It looks like the new guys — Boli Bolingoli and Hatem Abd Elhamed, specifically — are getting in sync with the rest of the club, though Elhamed’s injury may be cause for concern. Johnston especially is playing his way into a starting position, and should be utilized in tandem with Edouard and Griffiths as a new trio of scoring threats.

Griffiths is back. Nitcham is back, and looks like he has something to prove, if he only wants to make Celtic a stop on his way to another club (and who are we to stop him if he wants to play out-of-this-world football?).

But the man of the match, and the player announcing his presence with authority so far over the last few weeks, is Christie. After a season-ending injury against Aberdeen toward the end of last season, Christie’s play so far this season, in the UEFA qualifiers and now in the first game of the regular season, has been flawless. If anyone were to tell you last year that Christie would come out of the starting blocks with feet blazing, you might have doubled over in laughter.

No one is laughing now. But you can definitely see the smiles returning to the faces of the Celtic faithful.

Finally, as we head into the new season, with 37 games to go in the Premier League schedule, clearly Neil Lennon has brought back the thunder. As we head to 9 in a row, it looks like we’re in for a great ride.

Buckle up.

[73 degrees. Wildfire threat level today in rural Santa Cruz County: High]