Unemotional Stunt (Part 2: To Have and to Hold Back)

 I’ve never wept at a game because of a setback in a football competition. I store them up, the bad times. I know I’ll have the rest of my life to regret them – that I’ll live those defeats way beyond the confines of the stadium and that they’ll come pouring out the eyeballs when we next win a big one. 

I’ve always seen the “devastation” as part of the game. Even as a kid I knew that to take the pain so hard would eventually cost me my interest in the sport itself. There was an instinctive understanding of football’s long narrative, that most of us get two or three moments in life to see our team truly over-achieve, reach a peak we’d established as doable for them around age 10.

Such truly joyous moments are so few and far between you need to build up a resistance to being constantly denied them. Seeing Corporate wallies giggling in the concourse as they depart seats lifelong season ticket holders were kicked out for champions League games - that’s too much. This is where the most stunted of non-criers will vent their pain by inflicting it on those showing way too little.

Generally speaking, however, I hate the idea of a camera close-up of me, as Rangers fail to win a game they were never really expected to, being relayed to the world. Forget the obvious entertainment it would grant Celtic fans – I'd be ashamed of such outrageous self-indulgence when so many other clubs never win so much as a Scottish League Cup. There's real vanity to it.

And yet I have welled up when Rangers lost out. Mr Stoic here has indeed blubbed at defeat - twice in fact - and blubbed but good. Neither was as straightforward an incident as you might think, so perhaps it’s apt that the connection this time is Manchester City.

 In 1998 when Rangers lost the chance to win ten titles on the trot, winning our final game of the season away to Dundee United as Celtic’s home victory over St Johnstone denied us the league by two points, I was my usual self – more hollowed out with resignation than animatedly bereft.

 My sister and I listened to the game on the radio in my Glasgow (mature) student flat. The main thing in those days was that Rangers had equalled Celtic’s nine-in-a-row but, as has proven true, I knew the failure to do ten would nevertheless haunt me forever. And if I cried once what’s to stop me crying forever?

 I quietly saw my sister into the city centre and onto her train back to sunny Ayrshire. Glasgow Central station resembled a war zone as thousands of Rangers fans had been watching our game on a big screen at Ibrox (this was the last time a final day title decider would not be shown live on a TV channel) and were now bumping into celebrating Celtic fans returning from Parkhead as everyone set off home.

 All this was expected, emotionally planned for and no surprise to me. Them’s the fitba breaks. I was skint and in the middle of my finals. Hey - it was an excuse to have a frugal, healthy evening.

 I kept my head down and got back to my flat, which I shared with a Celtic-supporting bloke and a girl with a boyfriend from Galway I’d become mates with. They didn’t want to get in my way and I stayed out of theirs that night. I’d gone nuts the previous year, in the same flat, when Rangers sealed nine-in-a-row and they’d respected that: Time for me to reciprocate.

 But all this diplomacy – and my gutted, emptied mood - meant I was sat alone in my room on a Saturday night; no intention of studying and incapable of any real indulgence. BBC 2 was screening a night of football-related programmes, all in a “You don’t have to be mad to love footy but …” vein.  I think it was hosted by Mark and Lard:

 This felt perfect: I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t consumed by football feeling so to watch a movie or a game show would’ve been pointless. Yet this channel was relaying English football stories so there’d be no direct, painful references to my mob. I watched, tepidly sipping a few cans of something, hiding myself in the safety of English fan culture.

 Then a Manchester City supporter, in his 30s, began talking about his son, who he’d lost to a horrible illness. He spoke of how they went to City games together, at Maine Road. He spoke about how when City, one day, got back in the top flight, it would be for his son, who he knew would be watching.

 That was me. Gone. Gone for ages. Properly blubbing. Distraught for minutes – maybe quarter or half an hour; just gone. Quietly sobbing in my room, on a big, green fucking chair borrowed from a fellah who’s dad had won the All-Ireland with Galway.

 I’ve never quite sorted out why I went like that. Mostly it was for that man and his son – but I usually respect that kind of grief rather than indulge in something I’d been lucky enough never to feel.  But that City fan and his son were telling me why it was okay to love football so deeply. Add to that the stress of final exams which I hadn’t studied for in any way shape or form, that I was truly head-over-heels in love for the first time in my life but so much so that I wanted the girl to live her life away from me, and the other random, personal shit always thrown up by student life.

 But mostly it was because ten years of sheer football tension needed to get out. I gret like a baby after Rangers won a battle that day, after winning the war the previous year, but lost the minor campaign that followed. I did the sobbing all alone in my room and most of it came from sheer pride at what Rangers had achieved – taking that tenth season right down to the wire, running on fumes - rather than what had been lost. 

 So there was some sort of tortuously strained link when, ten years and five days later, with us again en route to losing the title to Celtic on the last day of the season, my true Rangers obsession came to fruition at Maine Road’s replacement:

 All I ever really needed was to see us in a European final. Since I was a kid, reading about "Barcelona in 1972" and later watching the video of that victory over Moscow Dynamo, I knew real success for my club would be reaching a continental showpiece. Nine-in-a-row was a domestic, local, private affair and it had to be done but, Jeezus H Christ, it was so tense and horrible so much of the time, with virtually all the pressure on Rangers. European football is freeing – like a holiday. And it’s all the more glorious for being watched and shared by an entire continent.

For as far back as I could remember, I dreamed of being there when a Rangers captain again swapped pennants on the half-way line of a neutral venue that wasn’t Hampden, with a UEFA trophy glittering in the background. Again, winning it was, like ten-in-a-row, so much nicer but not the main requirement.

So when, one year after I attended Sevilla v Espanyol at Hampden in the UEFA Cup final, the Rangers players walked past the very same trophy on the podium in the City of Manchester Stadium main stand, I could definitely feel the lips wobble, the throat dry and the eyes dampen. 

A 67-game campaign – where I’d attend 49 of them and blogged extensively about every one into the wee small hours before working a full-time job the next day, had reached its denouement. Again, the physical and mental exhaustion was kicking in. A tear or two went over the ridge and onto the No-Man’s Land of the cheeks. But I sucked the rest up and got some stiff into my upper lip, at least.   

 There was no fucking way I was taking the chance I’d be spotted on camera. For me, again, this entire run to a European final, from last-minute winners in Champions League qualifiers and finishing third in the same group as Barcelona, to endless 0-0s and tight games through the subsequent UEFA Cup knock-out rounds, was one long victory – and one you could only stop worrying about and start celebrating when you knew it was over.

The loss to Zenit finished the run and I was remaining inside that ground to applaud Zenit – managed by an Ex-Rangers manager – and to laud my team for ensuring I could die happy. With football, I cry when I’m happy, when my team make me undeniably proud.

With Manchester 2008, the only real defeat took place shortly afterwards, when I got back into the city centre. That time, my heart really did sink - for what had happened and how it would be used. But tears weren't appropriate.

 
 We only truly lost that tenth straight Scottish league title on the last day of the season. We only truly lost that UEFA Cup final in the last minute. The Saturday after Ten-in-a-row passed us by we lost the Scottish Cup final to Hearts and my mate and I joined my flat-mate from Edinburgh and toasted her Jambo dad.

 The day before, the day Frank Sinatra died, the day of our final finals, that other girl told me she wasn’t going anywhere without me and a year later, dear reader, we were married and that's one result that's had her crying ever since. So tears must symbolise real joy, right?

 Just like at weddings, you may cry for the joy of seeing two people in love - you may even cry at the thought your daughter is now wed to a fat football geek from Ayrshire. But if it’s a truly bad result – like you know your new father-in-law can blow the head off a rabbit from half a mile away – you need your wits about you and your eyes dry as a bone.

Unemotional Stunt (Part 1: Do You Take This Geek?)

 I got married on a Wednesday. Neither of us were fussed about a big do, we’d been living together for a year anyway and most of our pals were, like our newly graduated selves, still skint from their student days and working weekends. Registry office, pub: let’s do it.

 Best man? My sister. Oh, yeah – just when you thought you’d had enough, convention.

 It was fun to briefly make my parents think there was another reason we were heading down the carpeted aisle between the plastic chairs “in three weeks’ time?!”, although not so much hers when her farmer dad did actually own several shotguns back then.

 I upset my many relatives by keeping it small but this was because my intended's family was so small. Yet, when the registrar checked for the first available date, the most romantic gesture I could possibly make towards the actual love of my life – someone who, aherm, “knew what I liked” – was to forgo the Champions League final on her behalf.

 What? No, I don’t mean forgo playing in it.

 Eh? Miss attending the Champions League final? No – sorry – I don’t mean that either.

 I mean not watching it live on the telly.

 Hey, you don’t know me like she does, right. She knew that, for me, that was a big sacrifice. Huge.

 One of our first dates-which-was-in-absolutely-no-way-a-date came two years earlier, when I hosted a party in my student flat room for the 1997 final. About a dozen of us crammed in there to watch Dortmund upset Juve on my wee portable colour telly and toast Paul Lambert as a Scotsman winning Europe’s biggest club prize, in Munich.

 She wore shoes sprinkled as glitteringly silver as the European Cup and I was reminded of that first day I met her, after that exam, in that bar in that lane, with our various pals, when I first saw those eyes and a girl in my tutorial group remarked on those eyes, to their owner, and the eyes laughed with an embarrassed modesty that told me I was in serious trouble.

 Luckily, I was off to Romania v Bulgaria at Euro 96 in Newcastle with my mate the next day. I left the bar early. That night, Friends was on the telly – the episode where Chandler accidentally lets Rachel know Ross has always loved her. Yeah that was creepy, Ross. Don’t be friends with someone you know you actually lust after.

 So we watched the 1997 Champions League final together as pals. In my bedroom. On my bed. But there were lots of other men and women on the bed too. Friends, you might call them. But I'd buttoned down my feelings of anything other than friendship. I did the healthy thing. I buried stuff so deep I almost forgot it was there.

 Two years later, here was I, deigning to not watch the European Cup final live on telly for the first time since – well, only since 1990, actually, when it wasn’t shown on terrestrial telly because English clubs were still banned from Europe. But – hey – don’t tell her that. Am I right, lads. Am I right!

She already maintains I was so stunned anyone would have me I had to take the first available date in case she changed her mind. And that patter is as crazy as it is unoriginal, right?  Right, lads? Lads...?

 Basically, my wife and I had our “reception” the night Bayern Munich chucked the Champions League final to Manchester United, in injury time. I had shed tears of joy - in a frighteningly pertinent metaphor considering what happened to my waistline over the next few years, all those buttons popped open to set my emotion free - the day Sammy Kuffour was on his knees, pounding the Camp Nou grass in the deepest full-time whistle pain of his life.  

 Four months later, Bayern had their revenge. In the city of our marriage, in the very parish in which Sir Alex Ferguson, breaker of Bayern hearts was born -  in the group stage of the very same competition - Michael Tarnat equalised via Roque Santa Cruz’s armpit in the very final minute and I, in full physical attendance, almost breathed a sigh of relief that the world was still on its axis after knowing for the last hour the unwritten Laws of Facing FC Bayern demanded we had to follow up Jorg Albertz’s opener if we’d ever wanted to win this game.

 On the final whistle, as Sammy Kuffour strolled happily off the pitch directly below me, I turned to see my wife and my best man crying. 

 And I didn’t think “how dare you act as devastated as I feel”. I was still a nice person back then. But, as I doled out the hugs and reassurance, I did wonder why, when they attended the football so very rarely – when they would have forgotten the score and maybe even the opponent in this game within a year – why the two most important young women in my life would shed a tear for it.

Or why I wouldn’t. Or why I suddenly needed to get them out of there before the ITV cameras picked out the back of the Copland Road stand.



To be, ye know, continued.

Why Belgian Football - and Belgium - Hates Me

                         

Did I ever tell you about the time I saved my wife from a tiger? No? Well, that’s probably because my feat of heroism didn’t take place in the Indian rain forest but in the passenger lift to the top of a famous European tourist attraction. And it wasn’t so much a tiger as someone dressed as a tiger. And they were so skinny I couldn’t tell if it was a young man or a young woman (it may actually have been a leopard suit, perhaps a cheetah. I don’t know - I’m a man of action, not David bloody Attenborough) so, knowing a passport-revoking assault could also become a hate crime, my coiled-spring SAS reaction was swiftly dialled down to a decidedly huffy mince towards the pronounless jungle cat, my not-in-any-way-bothered missus, and the female photographer demanding to take a picture of my wife and I with the “tiger”,  which we would then buy for far too many Euros at the end of our visit.

 That’s Belgium for you. Or, rather, that’s Belgium for me.

 It’s a country that doesn’t hate me. In fact, I get the distinct impression it hardly thinks about me at all. Yet, despite the fact I’m as big a fan as anyone of chips with mayo, waffles with ice cream and Poirot with Suchet, it consistently throws my excitement back in my face.

 Maybe it’s the fact I don’t like mussels. Maybe it’s that I’m trying just too hard to like a country so beloved of two of my personal TV heroes, Ian Nairn and Jonathan Meades. Perhaps it’s that it has enough identity problems of its own to be bothered with a Scotland supporter who dislikes the SNP more than the England national team and was raised neither catholic nor protestant despite having a mother from one religion and a father from the other. Whatever the cause, my relationship with Belgium is… well, I believe the Flemish expression is “pffft”.

 This is neither the “name me a famous Belgian” cliché nor an aversion gleaned from the Cockpit of Europe appellation. Bar Brel, in Glasgow’s Ashton Lane, is one of my favourite bars in the world and while Jaques Brel, the man it’s named for, isn’t my favourite singer in the world, he was bloody good and seriously cool. Bowie covered his “Amsterdam” and didn’t get anywhere close.

 No, the cause is mysterious but the fact undeniable; if I’m looking forward to something Belgian, it all goes weird. If I’m concerned about something Belgian, it laughs in my face. If I’m about to get angry at something Belgian, it runs away, calling me whatever the French is for “tight git” and shutting the lift door behind it.

 The point of all this? Well, I’m not just trying to explain why last Thursday, in Belgium’s second city, against Belgium’s oldest club, I wasn’t in any way surprised to go through all of the above emotions in the space of one of the most barnstorming 90 minutes Rangers have ever played (that it was actually 105 minutes is just the start of the story). I’m giving you a solid reason why, despite our team winning that game by the odd goal in seven, we, as a support, should remain cautious about tonight’s return leg.

 There’s a case for saying this is just what Rangers do now in the first leg of the Europa League Last 32. We concede more than expected against a team in much red but eventually come out on top in an epic. In that case, per the second leg against Braga last season, we’ll see out this tie in a well-drilled fashion, entertaining only for further evidencing the ongoing miracle of Steven Gerrard’s Rangers in Europe. And Alfredo’s first goal - or three - in the knockout stages.

 However, if last week’s heart-stopper was about this beef - or boeuf, or stoofvlees - between me and Belgium, I’m worried. I’m worried for Rangers. Because if you think it’s all in my head and it’s only about my holidays, think again. It’s all about the football.

 I’ve seen the Belgium national team three times in the flesh. I know many Bluenoses have little time for Scotland and I respect why. However, while I’ve never worn a kilt, I’ve always supported my local national side and at Hampden in the last few years I’ve seen Belgium win 4-0, twice, 365 days apart. Furthermore, in a World Cup qualifier 20 years ago, they equalised in injury time despite being 2-0 down within half an hour. Belgium have never won a major tournament yet I’ve seen them beat Scotland 10-2 on aggregate.

 Then there’s the anorak thing, my wee side passion: Long story short, I’ve seen 71 of the 102 teams to play in a European final. Belgium has five such clubs. The only one I’ve seen in the flesh? Anderlecht. Four times European Cup-Winners’ Cup finalists, three times Fairs/UEFA Cup finalists: I saw them in John Brown’s testimonial game.

 The famous night against Club Brugge (runners-up in the 1976 UEFA Cup and 78 European Cup)? The night Scott Nisbet scored that goal for ten men which, even now, has me crying every time I see it on YouTube? Oh, I was there alright. I was there about three hours before kick-off, trying desperately to get a spare ticket. All I got was a pennant, wet, and the train home to watch it on telly.

 That was a year before I started back in full-time education aged 24. I was still paying off the credit card I’d battered while working in order to follow follow every week since leaving school at 16. I made it to the famous Leeds and Marseille home ties that season but couldn’t afford a season ticket or even to buy all three group games up front.

 As soon as I was solvent again, at the end of that decade, I vowed I’d never miss another meaningful home game. And for the last 21 years I largely haven’t. So, of course, the Belgian sides I need to score off my list pick this season to start arriving at Ibrox, the season Covid kept everyone out the grounds.

 It was horrible for all of us not being there for the visits of Benfica (ten times European finalists) and Galatsaray (2000 UEFA Cup winners). But I’ve seen Benfica in the flesh, at Anfield. And I was at our first Ibrox meeting with Galatasaray, when Hagi Senior faced us in the Champions League. Those two great clubs are on my European finalists Got list. Club Brugge, KV Mechelen (1988 European Cup-Winners’ Cup champions), Standard Liege (1982 European Cup-Winners’ Cup runners-up) and Royal Antwerp (1993 European Cup-Winners’ Cup runners-up), however, are on my Not Got list – the one that’s taken me 36 years to get down to just 31 clubs.

 KV Mechelen don’t do much European football these days. But Standard Liege and Royal Antwerp couldn’t wait to turn up at my front door as soon as they heard I wasn’t allowed to open it. I’m convinced the only reason Rangers have beaten one of them and should eliminate the other, is the fact they can still annoy the shit out me by playing in front of my season ticket seat, knowing I can’t tick them off my list.

 Standard Liege lost the Cup-Winners’ Cup final at the Nou camp ten years after we won it there. I’ve wanted to see them ever since my gran brought me a Standard pennant back from Belgium around the same time, from one of those ferry trips to Ostend all the rage in the early 80s. It still hangs in the same room as my Rangers v Brugge pennant from 1992-93, reminders of love and failure.

 Never mind Roofe’s sensational winner in the Stade Maurice Dufrasne – I would only have been at the home tie in this season’s group stage and what a game that was. Standard wore a sensationally continental away kit - red and white half hoops with black shorts, like nothing you’d see in Scotland, defying the idea strips are now globally generic. That strip, like them twice taking the lead and us winning, epitomised the glamour of European nights. All that was missing was the most important element: me (and my wee list, and my marker pen).

 I had to attend night school to get back into full time education. As skint as I was when Royal Antwerp reached the 1993 Cup-Winners’ Cup final, I wasn’t so skint I couldn’t rough it to London and back.

 I was only 23 years old and had never been to one of these European finals that so obsessed me. But I had an exam, that very day - the day of Royal Antwerp v Parma at massive old Wembley. A crowd of 37,000 turned up. A match ticket wouldn’t have been a problem – there were 55,000 going spare. And, of course, later, I found out I’d got into Uni through my other exams. I sat my Higher Modern Studies – I missed that final - for nothing.

 Bloody Belgians.

 The tiger incident? That came during a July 2004 holiday in Brussels, with the girl I met at Uni. We like a city break. I usually go crazy with the sightseeing. I’ll never know why but in Brussels that just didn’t happen. It was great but in a very weird, slightly draining way. The window of our entirely air conditioned room looked out onto the centre of the hotel – the dining area under the atrium and the doors of all the other rooms. Weird.

 I went to Anderlecht’s Stadium and it was shut. We spent half an hour in a near-empty bar unable to get served. We kept intending to do a day trip to Brugges but never did. We found the plaque commemorating Verlaine shooting Rimbaud but didn’t go into the Musée des Beaux Arts. We did go to our first ever Ethiopian restaurant but, far from treating Brussels like Auden and Isherwood, one day we ended up in front of a TV watching the Open, from Troon – in Ayrshire - Ayrshire, where my mum and dad lived. I was in the capital of Belgium, looking at background shots of Ailsa Craig and the Isle of Arran, landmarks I could see from my bedroom window every bloody day growing up.

 And in that Ardrossan bedroom, of a schoolnight, scouring my Marshall & Cavendish Encyclopedia of World Football, I was transfixed by a black and white picture of the 1958 European Cup final between Real Madrid and Milan - in Brussels. Almost more than the action shot of Alonso saving from Juan Schiaffino, what grabbed my attention was the sight, behind the Heysel stadium, looming above the packed terraces, of what looked like a gargantuan, skeletal space ship from a 1950s B-movie; The Atomium. 

 The same year Real won that final (3-2 after extra time), Brussels also staged the famous Expo World’s Fair and built the Atomium, a 335 foot high stainless steel model of the atoms making up a cell of iron as it would appear under a microscope. Exciting, mind-bending stuff, eh? Yeah, well, maybe in 1958. And also now, apparently.

 When I got there in July 2004, having already failed to get into the Heysel Stadium (surprise, surprise - it was shut), the Atomium was falling to pieces. It was due to shut in October of 2004 for refurbishment. But the refurb was already under way. And the desperate attempt to hawk money from visitors with the indeterminate cat costume was, in its own way, perfectly apt. But if you got in the lift you could visit the various “atoms” and I knew at least one of them offered a view of Belgium’s national stadium.

 The Heysel stadium, of course, by then had completed its own refurbishment, physical and otherwise - it was now the Baudouin Stadium – in an attempt to escape its own, much darker history. It now had more and bigger stands than in 1958, and huge cantilevered roofs which I imagine blocked much of my view of the pitch. I can’t remember because (a) I was too worried about another attack from the big cat that may well, now I think about it, have been native to the Belgian Congo and (b) I seem to have lost the photos I know I must have taken that day. 

 The only stadium pictures I can find from my trip to Brussels are of the famous Edmond Machtens Stadium. It’s a ground so open on one side you can photograph it from the street. The year before I stood in the Molenbeek district sunshine holding my camera through the gates, RWD Molenbeek were forced into another merger. The following year, one of the stands I pictured was named after Raymond Goethals, the manager in charge of Standard Liege when they bribed a domestic opponent to chuck a game the week of their 1982 Cup-Winners’ Cup final, the manager of Olympique de Marseille when they did likewise the week of their 1993 Champions League final and the manager of Anderlecht for two of their three successive 1970s European cup-Winners’ Cup finals.

 That’s Anderlecht, who bribed the referee ahead of the home leg of their 1984 UEFA Cup semi-final versus Nottingham Forest. Franky Vercauteren played for Goethals at Anderlecht. Vercauteren is Royal Antwerp’s manager right now and when, last Thursday, that Bulgarian referee allowed Avenatti, Seck and Lukaku to get away with assaults on, respectively, Tav, Kent and Balogun, but booked Ryan Kent for nudging someone, I did begin to wonder.

 But mostly I wonder if the way Belgium hates me will see Royal Antwerp win by two clear goals tonight, or will it ensure we go through purely so we can draw Club Brugge in the next round? Just to piss me off. That’s Club Brugge who may well have taken money off Marseille in their final game in our 1992-93 Champions League group. Photos with a tiger or access to European finals – it’s all about money with the Belgians, while I’m just here for the sights. That’s it – that will be why we just don’t get on.

 My Not Got list remains at 31, despite the fact it should have been in the twenties. That Rangers have offered me the chance to go to the match virtually – to join in a virtual fan experience - seems like the final insult. I’m as close as I can ever be to seeing Royal Antwerp in the flesh, without really being there. And, like me getting through this entire rant without mentioning Tintin, Rangers are as close as it’s possible to be to the next round without being there yet.

Borna Claims the Baggage

You know all about Rangers 4-3 first leg victory in Antwerp in the Last 32 of this season's UEFA Europa League. If you don't, go and watch it. Watch it knowing the score and you'll only be doing what I did less than 24 hours after watching it live. That I had to, gives you a mere whiff of the drama involved. This copy of my post in the Gersnet match thread gives you more of a taste - via two bites with different-sized dentures - of the chaos. Enjoy.

I watched the full game again. Not just because, when it's as exciting a game as that, and you get the result, you kind of have to watch it again but also because watching it live was just such a stress-riddled, over-excitable experience I wasn't really able to properly judge what exactly had happened.

Can't say I was any less astounded during the second watch but, being a bit calmer, I felt, yeah, there was a bit of opening rustiness due to Kent being dropped and suspension buddies Roofe and Morelos coming back in at the same time as a not-quite-match-fit Scotty Arfield. But, as with Alfie going on to be instrumental in all four of our goals after missing a good early chance to put us in front, I feel sure we would normally have gone on to win this one very easily.

That we didn't was, for me anyway, attributable to the circumstances: I know you have to be ready for anything - especially in Europe - but most of the few mistakes we made, almost all of which were instantly punished, were down to stuff that, well, happened to us rather than was caused by us:

For example, an injury to our captain, who never gets injured, in the very week we lose the young lad who was meant to cover him, because we suspended him, and Covid protocols isolated him, because he went to a party, and then - during the injury time allowed for Tav being replaced! -  the star striker who stole the show, who stole the whole group stage, the last time we were in Belgium is injured. That had everyone wondering what the hell??

When you lose a player like Tav - a player who is never injured, never dropped and is so instrumental to our tactical vision and team identity - it will inevitably send a wee tremor through the club. When you lose him in the first half of a vital European away game, one in which you're already getting three other players back up to speed... that has to send shock waves through the team on the pitch.

Then, during the added injury time for Roofe going off - and because the paperwork for Kent coming on wasn't ready for the fourth official (Jimmy Bell's second mistake, after Rofe-gate? You can tell him) - Antwerp get the softest penalty in the history of soft penalties, and we're going in 2-1 down and looking like the gods have it in for us, after having led 1-0 and looking like we could open up our hosts at will.

Add to all that the worst-since-Beaton-at-Ibrox-v-Lennon's-Hibs refereeing performance, plus - whatever its merits or otherwise - the very fact we're not used to playing games under the auspices of VAR disrupting our flow in a way that perfectly suited an injury-riddled Antwerp side who wanted a bitty, broken-up game, and winning that leg by any score is utterly bloody magic.

Little wonder Stevie G said the players adapted to Dundee United's tactics in our next match by sorting it out on the pitch themselves. After last Thursday's tribulations they'll be able to switch formation ten times a game while solving a Rubik's cube with their left hand and doing some Sudoko with the right (pen in the mouth, filling out Jimmy's paperwork for the next sub).

My arse was on the floor at full-time on Thursday yet the players, hilariously, brilliantly - reassuringly - seemed to be just casually giving it, "Nice wee workout, that - aye, quite enjoyable". And on Sunday, after a bit of job sharing - Greegs covering the first half hour while everyone else had a lie-in - we saw that surfeit of enjoyment from Thursday pour into their legs when they just unleashed on United in a way we haven't managed to do to anyone other than Ross County this year.

But the best laugh for me in Antwerp, as the players came off the Bosuilstadion pitch, was the off-stage member of our coaching staff  hollering at Goldson - "CONNOR! CONNOR! GET HIM AWAY!" - because they thought Borna was about to go for their keeper again (the second one he'd put a penalty past), following their wee squaring-up after the winning spot-kick.
 

Borna hears this, turns to Goldson and just smiles and brushes it off as he heads over to, apparently, shake someone else kindly by the hand. But he has that exact same fixed smile, open-eyed stare on his face which could just as easily mean he's about to scalp someone, which is why I love players from the former Yugoslavia: 

They don't really do the posturing or handbags stuff. They're all skinny as rakes and their mood is either "I would die for you, my friend" or "You will die at my hands, my enemy". No in-between.


GOLDSON: "Come on, Borna. Leave it. You're on a yellow and we've already lost Tav. Get up that tunnel."

BORNA: "Leave what, big man? I'm chill. No sweat. Nae danger. Just going to shake hands with the guy".

GOLDSON: "You sure? Coz I can never tell wi you. I'll get in trouble if you lose the plot".

BORNA: "Totally sure. All forgotten. I'm 100% Karma Chameleon. We won, didn't we?! Why would I even care?! No, I'll see you in there, bro". 
 

GOLDSON: "Okay. Cool. See ye in there". [turns towards the tunnel]

BORNA:"Oh, Connor..."

GOLDSON: [turning back, disinterestedly] "Yeah?"

BORNA: "Does a severed head count as hand luggage or would I have to put that in the hold?"

GOLDSON; "Fu**ing WHAT??!"

BORNA: "I said it's all good and I'll see ye in the dressing room..."

Fat Old Man Tells Football Where It's Going Wrong

They don't make stadiums, crowds, friendlies, host cities, extra time, ticket offices and yellow football kits like they used. Oh I let it all pour out over the years, I did - mostly, according to this selection, the year 2016 and mostly on the When Saturday Comes website.

Think yourself lucky - I wrote over a hundred of these.*

DECEMBER 2016: Japan’s Club World Cup highlights shift from traditional powerbases

NOVEMBER 2016: Ticket offices remain key to clubs winning over hearts and minds

OCTOBER 2016: Overpowering crowd noises are a rare thing of beauty

AUGUST 2016: Extra time made redundant by more TV-friendly formats

AUGUST 2016: Friendlies don’t need hype to make them worthwhile

JUNE 2016: English stadiums edge towards elusive 100,000 capacity

APRIL 2016: Nothing would beat being there for Leicester title win

FEBRUARY 2016: Clubs need to win a title before truly lusting after success

SEPTEMBER 2014: Yellow kits aren't first choice but do hold power

*Well, I had over a hundred published - I probably wrote about 300 (Some of my ideas are too, erm, "ahead of their time". Yeah, let's just say that).

Accies, Alloa and Anyone but the Old Firm.

It's fair to say most of my short, undistinguished writing career has been inspired by the topic of a very big club from Govan.

While this has me half-way to mainstream hackdom, if I'm ever gonnae make the Sportscene couch I also need to churn out the occasional platitudinous acknowledgment that for some cuddly, wacky, salt-of-the-earth individuals, Scottish football isn't just about Rantic and Celgers.

When Saturday Comes let me do just that on their website over the years. Here are a few quick links to articles proving I'm as capable of a rye, sideways, "What are they like?!" piece to camera as that other fat, bald bloke who used to interview the woman who sold the raffle tickets at a non-league club, on every episode of Football Focus.

Think his name was Clem. Her name was always Darling... or Sweetheart. No. Was it "My Love"?...

SEPTEMBER 2014: Dumbarton and Alloa Progress Impresses.

MARCH 2016: Natural Order of Rangers and Celtic Must not Return.

MAY 2016: Hibs Can Ditch "Bottlers" Tag Against Rangers in Cup Final.


                            

I should also take this moment to apologise to anyone checking the fourth reference on the Hamilton Academical FC Wikipedia page. It doesn't get any better than seeing your work has become a Wiki citation; it doesn't get any worse than seeing the article cited has been removed from the When Saturday Comes website (Pro-Old Firm to their core!).

So here, from December 2013, in the middle of a season which would end with them back in the top flight via relegating Hibs, is that full piece on my very real and undying admiration for Accies (With a liddle bit of Livi thrown in at the end):


Hamilton Academical Prospering with Frugal Ethos

Despite competition from more illustrious clubs, Hamilton Academical topped the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) Championship going into December. Dundee, Falkirk and Raith Rovers undoubtedly envy the sell-on clause Accies negotiated when selling James McCarthy to Wigan four years ago. The midfielder’s £13 million move to Everton this summer reaped them something approaching his original 2009 price of £1.2m. But even before McCarthy’s latest transfer Accies had won all five league games and their cup tie at Premiership Kilmarnock.

 Moreover Chairman Les Gray promised none of the windfall would go on new players or completing Hamilton's two-sided stadium. Their new synthetic pitch, plus refurbishment of the New Douglas Park floodlights and dressing rooms would be paid for. The remainder would go towards returning to the top flight, debt-free, through developing young Scottish talent. Accies refusal to scatter cash on players or stadium was the antithesis of Scottish Premier League's (SPL) idea of itself but kept them alive while the SPL crashed.

Few clubs better understand the importance of remaining both frugal and local. In 1970, with debts mounting and Clyde eyeing their ground, Accies briefly resigned from the league. They sold the ground to Sainsbury supermarkets in 1994. But wrangling over the proceeds and the local council condemning old Douglas Park ensured seven years ground-sharing, with Albion Rovers in Coatbridge and Partick Thistle in Glasgow. Income plummeted. Unpaid players even went on strike. Failure to fulfil a 1999-2000 fixture cost Accies 15 points, ensuring relegation to the Third Division. A supporters group determined to bring the club home polled more votes than the Liberal Democrats in a 1999 by-election.

After two pre-war Scottish Cup finals it seemed modern day Accies would remain famous only for knocking Rangers out the 1986-87 Scottish Cup and cult hero Ian "Fergie" Russell, Scotland's most foul-mouthed fan. Anyone passing New Douglas Park might echo the contempt co-commentator Craig Burley expressed whenever Setanta or ESPN covered Old Firm visits during Accies’ three SPL seasons. Stuck on top of a scaffold, Burley slated locals seen watching the game from outside the ground.

 A much bigger polythene-covered scaffold behind the home goal wasn’t a nascent grandstand but a barrier to non-paying spectators. It’s now a training pitch. Another side of the ground presents a five-a-side pitch and 600 bucket seats under a marquee.  And buying a pie at New Douglas Park gets you struck by the ball. The food outlets are at the front of the stands, bordering the pitch.

But those stands - housing offices and retail outlets - have front rows approximately eight feet high. The sightlines are great. In 2008 Accies reached the top flight for the first time in 20 years. The SPL, formed in 1997, insisted they bring the seated capacity up to 6,000 (thus the marquee) and install under-soil heating, beneath their all-weather pitch. Accies could only afford to re-lay with grass. The SPFL replaced the SPL last summer, just as the synthetic pitch vital to Accies’ community-based infrastructure was reinstated.

The 2009 scrapping of the Scottish Premier Reserve League denied youngsters the chance to learn alongside experienced pros. At Hamilton this happens in the first team, under 32-year-old player-manager Alex Neil. With such a young squad Accies’ Under-20 League side becomes their de facto reserves. Glasgow-born McCarthy played first team football at 15. Incredibly, Scotland wouldn’t cap him at youth level so he plays for the Republic of Ireland. His FA Cup-winning Wigan team-mate, James McArthur – part of Scotland’s recent revival under Gordon Strachan - captained Accies at 20 and carries a similar sell-on clause.

Accies’ cutest move was not selling to the Old Firm. With Scotland a bargain basement for English clubs, sell-on clauses would reap less down the line. Rangers also won all their August SPFL games - but in League One. Accies will relish being one division above the behemoth with the UEFA-approved stadium which plunders their catchment area. Their pity, however, should be aimed slightly further down the Championship. Livingston, who in late October required the intervention of Supporters Direct Scotland to tackle mounting debts, still suffer from past adherence to the SPL model.

 Also producing future Scotland internationals (Leigh Griffiths, Robert Snodgrass), Livi’s 10,000-capacity four-sided Almondvale stadium was ready for their 2001 SPL debut. That you couldn’t see some pitch markings from the back of their shallow stands was irrelevant as TV aesthetics became all. Within eight years Livi qualified for Europe, won the League Cup and returned to the Third Division after their second administration. During the same period Accies returned to Hamilton and worked their way up to the SPL.

Rather than half-arsed, New Douglas Park embodies the half-way house Scottish football must occupy in straitened times. It lacks its predecessor’s rounded character but affords a comfortable view of both a decent game and the undulating financial landscape.

Let the Bad Times Roll - Rangers' Worst Season

 Little did I know what was coming. Fair enough, it wouldn't be for another eleven years, but little did I know our worst ever season might involve us only losing three league games.

Little did I know even dropping just six points in an entirely undefeated season could be far worse than 1985-86.

Click here to read the When Saturday Comes website version of my piece in magazine issue 171 (May 2001).

Little did I know, there are some leagues you just don't want to be in at all.

"As we struggled to average 13,000 the bright yellow, red and orange bucket seats at Ibrox all cried 'Look at me - I'm vacant!'"

Little did I know a piece describing your club's worst ever season could be an act of hubris... or, in fact, a wake-up call to anyone complaining about Rangers failure to win any major honours in our first four seasons back in the top flight.

Third place is always a calamity for Rangers - but things have been worse. And we now know, beyond all doubt, things will always get better.

When Saturday Comes Website Pieces: Rangers - The Road to Gerrard

My more straightforward, "reportery" When Saturday Comes website pieces on Rangers, as we worked our way back up the leagues and then tried to make a fist, rather than a total arse of it in the top flight.

As we currently cruise towards Title No.55 and enjoy a third straight season of European miracles, it's worth reminding ourselves just how many peaks and troughs - and managers and caretaker managers - Rangers went through to reach this moment.

Click on these links if you think you can handle it. The headlines are a story in themselves.

April 2016: Challenge Cup can be Rangers’ farewell gift.

Feb 2017: Rangers need new approach to challenge Celtic after Mark Warburton failure.

Sep 2017: Rangers’ “other” Glasgow derby as key to Pedro Caixinha’s future as Celtic clash.

Jan 2018: Rangers a big, wobbling mess and falling behind as managerial saga continues.

May 2018: Rangers shun steady progress in favour of Steve Gerrard’s star quality.

Making Hay

 BOOK REVIEW: Sent off at Gunpoint; The Willie Johnston Story by Tom Bullimore with Willie Johnston

Click here for the When Saturday Comes website version of my review printed in magazine issue 265 (March 2009).

When Saturday Comes website pieces: European Club Competition

Other than the monthly magazine, until the summer of 2018 When Saturday Comes also published original articles on their website:

Click on these links to check out three I wrote on my most beloved topic, UEFA club competition:

February 2016: If today's biggest Champions League clubs continue to disrespect the history of continental competition they'll go the same way as the very clubs they're now trying to exclude from Europe altogether.

June 2016: Atletico and Real Madrid meeting in the final for the second time in three years isn't just a phenomenon of the Champions League era, and repeat finals aren't necessarily a bad thing for any European competition.

May 2017: Why were there no more truly romantic adventure stories being told by the European club semi-finals?

And here, in full, as a retort to my Super Cup-hating blog on the three main European competitions, is a piece I had published the day of the 2015 final (well, I say "final"...):

If Champions League holders Barcelona defeat Europa League holders Sevilla tonight, they will equal Milan’s record of five UEFA Super Cup wins. More interestingly the sides meet in Tbilisi, 34 years after the Georgian capital should have first staged the Super Cup. Despite endless changes to the format, criteria and venue – even the continually morphing trophy was once replaced by a plaque – the Charity Shield of European competition has finally embraced its peripheral, transient nature.

This is the third year of UEFA taking the Super Cup “on the road”. A one-off game between the holders of the two European club trophies is neither a tournament nor a final and feels almost tautological. But by settling down in 1998, for 16 consecutive Augusts at Monaco’s Stade Luis II, it has survived long enough to seem traditional.

Despite including an unabashed UEFA jolly-up in Monte Carlo, the Super Cup accumulated enough back-story to risk venue changes after 2012. But it’s unlikely ever again to return to the two leg format. The people of Prague (2013), Cardiff (2014) and Trondheim (2016) have more interest in seeing Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona in a ceremonial European match than most season ticket holders at each of those clubs.

Dynamo Tbilisi won the 1980-81 Cup-Winners Cup. They should have played European Champions Liverpool in the following season’s Super Cup final. Whether it was the cold war – Georgia was then part of the USSR - the fact Dynamo had leathered Liverpool in the European Cup a few years earlier, or that only 12,000 attended the City Ground for Nottingham Forest’s home leg v Valencia the previous year isn’t quite clear. But, in only its tenth season, the Super Cup suffered its second cancellation.

A third would follow four years later: Juventus wouldn’t travel to Liverpool – even to play Everton –the season after the Heysel tragedy. English teams were banned from Europe and the days of the Super Cup appeared numbered.

Yet the Cup-Winners Cup disappeared first. After 1999 the holders of the UEFA Cup - latterly Europa League – met the Champions League winners.

 The Super Cup’s survival instinct was honed in chaotic beginnings. In 1972-73, Ajax refused to play Independiente of Argentina in another incidental fixture with a chequered past, the World Club Championship.  A Dutch journalist filled the void. He arranged home and away games against Cup-Winners Cup holders Rangers, who needed a glamour fixture both for their Centenary celebrations and because they were banned from Europe - a pitch invasion after their 1972 Cup-Winners Cup final win in Barcelona led to running battles with General Franco’s Civil Guard. So, though they defeated Rangers, Ajax didn’t get UEFA’s blessing til thrashing Milan 6-1 on aggregate in 1973-74’s second Super Cup.  

The fixture frequently drew small crowds, understandable when the previous season had seen the competitors enjoy incomparable European runs. In 1974-75, Cup-Winners Cup holders Magdeburg met European Champions Bayern Munich in the second round of the European Cup - a Super Cup meeting became superfluous. In 1991 Manchester United and Red Star Belgrade played only one leg, won by United at Old Trafford, because of the war in then Yugoslavia. And in 1996 Juventus, having won 6-1 at Paris St Germain, played their home leg in Palermo instead of Turin’s un-loved Stadio delle Alpi. A full house of 35,000 Sicilian Juventus fans may have persuaded UEFA that venues less familiar with European finals was the way ahead.

FIFA’s inevitable meltdown may have persuaded UEFA president Michel Platini it was time to leave Monte Carlo’s millionaires’ playground. The 21^st century Super Cup has become a corporate goldmine. But it’s now taking European winners to cities who won’t treat them as a sideshow. 

On the Offensive

 Sectarian chanting at Old Firm games was on the decline back in early 2008 but new unpleasantries were emerging. The target for some of my fellow Rangers fans was the late Jock Stein. And I was pretty much ashamed of that.

Click here for the When Saturday Comes website version of my piece in magazine issue 253 (March 2008)

Since I wrote this I've read and heard more than enough to know I should not have been so definite about Stein's ignorance of what happened at Celtic Boys Club. He is, in fact, reported by some to have thrown Torbert out of Parkhead, only for him to eventually be invited back by other Celtic board members.

Stein, a Rangers fan until the moment he signed for Celtic as a player, remains castigated by some Rangers fans for not going to the police, but he was far from alone in that. Similarly, this criticism will be far from alone in the grievances these same Rangers fans have against Celtic FC. 

While the severity of the alleged crimes involved are worlds apart, the confirmation bias at play is identical to the sudden pro-HMRC stance adopted by Celtic and their fans in the early part of the following decade. 

Rangers punters are the first people to criticise Celtic because they've had a lot to say about us in recent years, especially during Peter Lawwell's reign as Parkhead chief executive.  

However, turning this subject into a song reflects poorly on us as a support, when the real victims - still fighting for justice - should be allowed only a forensically objective light to be shone on these horrible crimes.

When Saturday Comes Website Pieces: Brazil 2014 & Euro 2016

Other than the monthly magazine, until the summer of 2018 When Saturday Comes also published original articles on their website:

Here are a few I provided on the topic of major international tournaments, namely the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil and Euro 2016 in France.

Check for yourself if they're merely an extended exercise in pretending I wasn't bothered Scotland hadn't qualified.

The rise of a particular skill across the planet's domestic leagues told me the 2014 World Cup would enjoy a new type of spectacular goal.

Why Costa Rica's great run in Brazil was never going further than the semi-finals; no-one ever goes further than the World Cup semis if they haven't earned their historical dues.

There was a lot of on-field emotion on display at Brazil 2014 - some of it genuine, some of it less so. Knowing how to cope with the real stuff and affect the other was key to tournament success.

Brazil v The Netherlands, the day before the final, seemed like a pointless fixture to many but, for me, a World Cup is pointless if it doesn't have a Third Place play-off .

Euro 2016 found me in a torpor of disaffection with international tournaments, soon changed my mind, but then began dragging all over again. Am I too old for so much football in one summer?

Path Finder

 BOOK REVIEW: Marvellous Marvin. The Life, Football and Faith of a Soca Warrior by Marvin Andrews with Tom Brown

Click here for the When Saturday Comes website version of my review printed in magazine issue 254 (April 2008).

When Saturday Comes website pieces: Scotland National Team

 Other than the monthly magazine, until the summer of 2018 When Saturday Comes also published original articles on their website:

Here are a few I provided over the years on the constantly triumphant, perma-glorious, ever optimistic topic of the Scotland national team.

You might not even need to click on the links to each piece to notice a theme developing:

How it felt as Euro 2016 kicked off knowing Scotland were the only home nation not to qualify.

Why we should look at the Welsh model as, on the eve of 2018 World Cup qualifiers, the national team sat on the brink of becoming an irrelevance even within Scotland.

Why losing his previous game in fact proved Gordon Strachan was absolutely the right manager to get a result out of our Russia 2018 qualifying clash with England at Wembley.

Why, despite remaining in contention as qualifying headed for its final rounds, Scotland would not only fail to reach Russia 2018 but were historically bound to fail in the most tortuous way possible.

How it felt to be a Scotland fan as the 2018 World Cup finals approached, knowing we hadn't qualified and our football association, having just replaced Strachan with Alex McLeish, was utterly clueless.

Like I said, something of a thread running through my Scotland pieces... a commonality of mood and tone, if you will.

Aherm.

All pictures taken by my suffering self.