For the past week, I have, I think been suitably gracious in my praise of Kazakh champions Astana, ahead of and after the first leg of our Champions League qualifier.
There are good reasons for that. Firstly, they are a good team as their home results against top-class European opposition have shown.
Secondly, the caricaturing of Kazakh people by Britain's best-loved racist comedian since Bernard Manning, Sasha Baron Cohen, with his Borat character has heaped humiliation on that nation in a way that has disadvantaged the country and, especially its young people.
Related to this is a sneaking suspicion that journalists in the tabloids that I do not read would not hesitate to big up those racist epithets with all the grace and dignity of an infant shouting, “funny wee man” at someone with an apparent physical handicap.
Kazakhstan is a nation asserting its confidence and its football teams are instruments of that.
Unfortunately, the country is also one of the most corrupt in the world.
Transparency International rates the country as coming 123rd (out of 167 listed states) in terms of above-board dealing. In other words, Kazakhstan hovers around the top 25% of the world's most corrupt countries.
Why is this relevant now? Because, when the referee was adding five minutes of injury time to a match that Astana had to win, that didn't seem to fit with the pattern of play during the match – but it would have seemed churlish to pick up on it at the time.
But when Astana are publicly issuing footage of Leigh Griffith wrestling off the attentions of Astana defender, Igor Shitov, – and claiming the clips showed a punch and red-card offence, you can tell that something from the darker side of football is afoot.
The referee on the night, allowed Patrick Roberts to be hacked down almost every time he made contact with the ball. Kieran Tierney was the subject of a ridiculous claim of a foul worthy of a face-holding.
These incidents are not coincidental. Astana identified Celtic's key players before the match and sought to neutralise them for the second leg.
In the case of Griffiths, he received a yellow card for the shoving in the box and therefore it should be impossible for UEFA to review the “incident” as if it had been missed.
But we now know the nature of Astana and, in terms of goodwill, at least, the gloves should be off.
That is to say that they will come to Celtic Park next week, where their players, staff and fans will enjoy a safe environment in arguably the best football arena in Europe.
But the underhand efforts of the club and its coaching staff should be seen for what they are – a bid to rob Celtic of our best players.
60,000 fans at Celtic Park? I wonder how the Astana players will enjoy their evening.
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Showing posts with label Leigh griffiths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leigh griffiths. Show all posts
Friday, July 29, 2016
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Emerging talent and the first signs of Celtic improvement under Brendan Rodgers
Well, it wasn't an emphatic performance but there are reasons to be cheerful tonight after Celtic left Astana with an invaluable draw.
The last two pieces on this blog both referred to the tie with Astana and for good reason.
“Glamour friendlies” are all very well but you only had to see the half-full Celtic Park on Saturday to play the English Champions in the International Champions Cup to get an idea of the difference between real competition and exhibition football.
Managers can say what they like about playing to win in these tournaments but the smiles all round after Leicester City won the penalty shoot-out showed that only the established UEFA-recognised tournaments count in football.
So, the complaints about Brendan Rodgers being left hamstrung were well justified – it is shocking that the club had to go into such a crucial qualifier without a recognised reliable central defender.
However, amid that sort of adversity, sometimes a genuine talent emerges who would not otherwise have been given a chance. In Astana, that was Eoghan O’Connell, rightly praised for a composed performance belying his young years and inexperience.
If we could just get a mirror image of the left side of our defence and apply it to the right, we would have lot fewer nervous Celtic fans.
The other post was on how fantastic a result a draw would be against a team that Galatasaray, Benfica and Atletico Madrid all failed to beat in Kazakhstan, last season.
So, in the circumstances, Brendan Rodgers and the players deserve all the credit coming their way for achieving that at such an early stage of the season, with such frailties in the squad.
There were mistakes and nerve-wracking times – far too many – but what was most encouraging was how Celtic managed to get a grip on the match in the last 20 minutes, when previous sides would have crumbled.
In fact, it was as if the team matured before our eyes, using the ball intelligently after Patrick Roberts and Leigh Griffiths had combined to produce a goal of exceptional quality.
We've had to many European disappointments to count in recent years, so there was never a sense of the job being done until the referee's final gift to Astana of five minutes added time had expired.
But, under immense pressure, there was a self-assuredness on the ball in the late stages that surely reflected the first meaningful improvement under Brendan Rodgers and his team.
There is still a major amount of work to do against an Astana side that showed once again that the generously funded Kazakh football has arrived and will make an impact soon.
We can look forward to that day – but hopefully not for another year yet.
--
“Glamour friendlies” are all very well but you only had to see the half-full Celtic Park on Saturday to play the English Champions in the International Champions Cup to get an idea of the difference between real competition and exhibition football.
Managers can say what they like about playing to win in these tournaments but the smiles all round after Leicester City won the penalty shoot-out showed that only the established UEFA-recognised tournaments count in football.
So, the complaints about Brendan Rodgers being left hamstrung were well justified – it is shocking that the club had to go into such a crucial qualifier without a recognised reliable central defender.
However, amid that sort of adversity, sometimes a genuine talent emerges who would not otherwise have been given a chance. In Astana, that was Eoghan O’Connell, rightly praised for a composed performance belying his young years and inexperience.
If we could just get a mirror image of the left side of our defence and apply it to the right, we would have lot fewer nervous Celtic fans.
The other post was on how fantastic a result a draw would be against a team that Galatasaray, Benfica and Atletico Madrid all failed to beat in Kazakhstan, last season.
So, in the circumstances, Brendan Rodgers and the players deserve all the credit coming their way for achieving that at such an early stage of the season, with such frailties in the squad.
There were mistakes and nerve-wracking times – far too many – but what was most encouraging was how Celtic managed to get a grip on the match in the last 20 minutes, when previous sides would have crumbled.
In fact, it was as if the team matured before our eyes, using the ball intelligently after Patrick Roberts and Leigh Griffiths had combined to produce a goal of exceptional quality.
We've had to many European disappointments to count in recent years, so there was never a sense of the job being done until the referee's final gift to Astana of five minutes added time had expired.
But, under immense pressure, there was a self-assuredness on the ball in the late stages that surely reflected the first meaningful improvement under Brendan Rodgers and his team.
There is still a major amount of work to do against an Astana side that showed once again that the generously funded Kazakh football has arrived and will make an impact soon.
We can look forward to that day – but hopefully not for another year yet.
--
Sunday, February 07, 2016
Remember our philosophy: EK-ing out a win is not good enough
"We did it by playing football; pure, beautiful, inventive football. There was not a negative thought in our heads."
Firstly, we should get our priorities right. This is an example of tautology. Tautology is, as every first-year philosophy undergraduate knows, effectively, saying one thing that becomes obsolete because it is a condition without which the fact could not exist.
“Three different people said so”. Tautology. Could three of the same person have said so?
“Begging the question” is different. The popular meaning of begging the question is to make it obvious that a question should be asked.
“Stokes chose to join a championship side when there were Premiership clubs interested, which begs the question: does he have any ambition?”
This would prompt apoplexy in any common-or-garden philosophy academic. Amid Glasgow Uni's cloistered halls, it wouldn't even warrant a “Byres-Road-Level” put-down (intended to denote that any couple of arseholes trying to sound clever by audibly debating in Kelvinside accents could come up with such reasoning).
From this, we can deduce that few Scottish football journalists are philosophy graduates.
“Celtic should have beaten East Kilbride more comfortably because a Scottish Premiership side should be considerably better than a Lowland League team” – this is “begging the question” in a way to attract criticism from Byers-Road-Level first-year philosophy undergraduate arseholes.
Fortunately, and it's one of our few current comforts, Celtic fans need not yet resort to metaphysics in order to have our club understood. We exist.
Sumus, we might say as if we hadn't had to use Google Translate to think of a grammatical way to say, “We are”, in a slapstick homage to cogito ergo sum. We think but, luckily, we also are. We do not have to ask judges to imagine our existence in ethereal terms involving butterflies in the stomach.
Great! We still exist!
And, first-things-first, we should praise East Kilbride, who also exist and have done for six years, for their performance against Celtic.
They are many years younger than us and, therefore, perhaps we might expect their youth to offer a telling advantage. A six-year-old may not have learned much about football but you would expect him or her to outlast your average centenarian.
But I am more generous than that. I think East Kilbride did rather well in their contribution to a match in which they looked like a relegation-battling Championship side again a promotion-chasing Hibs.
As a fan, afflicted with “Big Club Syndrome”, I think I must offer generosity in such a way as to appear gracious to the plucky club whose players and coaching staff indisputably performed admirably against my “big club”, which has all the hallmarks of one considering its pension and a smaller homestead, without so many stairs to climb, now that the kids have flown the coop.
And I do respect and admire East Kilbride and their personnel. Their (presumably sore) heads will be held high this week. They'll tell their kids and grandkids about the time they held their own against Celtic, who beat them with two scrambled goals, one of which could have been disallowed for handball, had the fates been on their side.
And yet I am caught between superlatives, comparatives and expletives.
Celtic are – we suspect and hope – the best team in Scotland.
Celtic were, marginally better than East Kilbride.
Celtic now consistently provoke the club's most passionate followers to turning the air a colour that they would normally prefer not to think about.
Celtic should be disappointed because we should have done better – tautology.
And yet when Leigh Griffiths was asked if he should be disappointed, despite the win, he protested. Let's be clear, Leigh is not one of our problem players. He is one of our must-haves.
And yet our best player of the season's comments surely reflect something of the philosophy at the club.
“It would have been hard if we’d lost today so it was a crucial victory but I was comfortable during the 90 minutes,” said the manager.
Is there a commitment to excellence at Celtic? If so, where is it manifest? Is there any ambition?
To this observer, a complacent group of players felt that they had to do “just enough” to overcome non-league opposition – a view supported by comments from players and management.
How many fans share that opinion?
“A club like no other,” said the branding – as if a slogan aping “mes que un club” would somehow suggest comparisons between Celtic and Barcelona. “Because Celtic” is, thankfully, now rarely mentioned.
It appears that the coaching and playing staff have no idea about what is expected of Celtic.
Is that the result of indoctrination by people with more “pragmatic” aims, instead pursuing projects?
What about the club's philosophy?--
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| Paul McStay: Beautiful football exponent |
“Three different people said so”. Tautology. Could three of the same person have said so?
“Begging the question” is different. The popular meaning of begging the question is to make it obvious that a question should be asked.
“Stokes chose to join a championship side when there were Premiership clubs interested, which begs the question: does he have any ambition?”
This would prompt apoplexy in any common-or-garden philosophy academic. Amid Glasgow Uni's cloistered halls, it wouldn't even warrant a “Byres-Road-Level” put-down (intended to denote that any couple of arseholes trying to sound clever by audibly debating in Kelvinside accents could come up with such reasoning).
From this, we can deduce that few Scottish football journalists are philosophy graduates.
“Celtic should have beaten East Kilbride more comfortably because a Scottish Premiership side should be considerably better than a Lowland League team” – this is “begging the question” in a way to attract criticism from Byers-Road-Level first-year philosophy undergraduate arseholes.
Fortunately, and it's one of our few current comforts, Celtic fans need not yet resort to metaphysics in order to have our club understood. We exist.
Sumus, we might say as if we hadn't had to use Google Translate to think of a grammatical way to say, “We are”, in a slapstick homage to cogito ergo sum. We think but, luckily, we also are. We do not have to ask judges to imagine our existence in ethereal terms involving butterflies in the stomach.
Great! We still exist!
And, first-things-first, we should praise East Kilbride, who also exist and have done for six years, for their performance against Celtic.
They are many years younger than us and, therefore, perhaps we might expect their youth to offer a telling advantage. A six-year-old may not have learned much about football but you would expect him or her to outlast your average centenarian.
But I am more generous than that. I think East Kilbride did rather well in their contribution to a match in which they looked like a relegation-battling Championship side again a promotion-chasing Hibs.
As a fan, afflicted with “Big Club Syndrome”, I think I must offer generosity in such a way as to appear gracious to the plucky club whose players and coaching staff indisputably performed admirably against my “big club”, which has all the hallmarks of one considering its pension and a smaller homestead, without so many stairs to climb, now that the kids have flown the coop.
And I do respect and admire East Kilbride and their personnel. Their (presumably sore) heads will be held high this week. They'll tell their kids and grandkids about the time they held their own against Celtic, who beat them with two scrambled goals, one of which could have been disallowed for handball, had the fates been on their side.
And yet I am caught between superlatives, comparatives and expletives.
Celtic are – we suspect and hope – the best team in Scotland.
Celtic were, marginally better than East Kilbride.
Celtic now consistently provoke the club's most passionate followers to turning the air a colour that they would normally prefer not to think about.
Celtic should be disappointed because we should have done better – tautology.
And yet when Leigh Griffiths was asked if he should be disappointed, despite the win, he protested. Let's be clear, Leigh is not one of our problem players. He is one of our must-haves.
And yet our best player of the season's comments surely reflect something of the philosophy at the club.
“It would have been hard if we’d lost today so it was a crucial victory but I was comfortable during the 90 minutes,” said the manager.
Is there a commitment to excellence at Celtic? If so, where is it manifest? Is there any ambition?
To this observer, a complacent group of players felt that they had to do “just enough” to overcome non-league opposition – a view supported by comments from players and management.
How many fans share that opinion?
“A club like no other,” said the branding – as if a slogan aping “mes que un club” would somehow suggest comparisons between Celtic and Barcelona. “Because Celtic” is, thankfully, now rarely mentioned.
It appears that the coaching and playing staff have no idea about what is expected of Celtic.
Is that the result of indoctrination by people with more “pragmatic” aims, instead pursuing projects?
What about the club's philosophy?--
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