The Scottish Premier League (SPL) is preparing the ground as much as possible to help Glasgow Rangers to qualify for the second phase of this season's Champions League. Sunday's match against the might of Gretna has been postponed to allow more preparation time for the Lyon match; the entire protestant population of south west Scotland is being given two days off work to focus on providing the necessary support; airports, roads and ferries are to be searched to reveal any French supporters trying to sneak in to the country; university boffins are focusing on cloud seeding to generate some driech weather for the guests; there are plans to offer bribes and housing extensions for the properties of the match officials; super-bugs are being liberally distributed in the kitchens of one particular five star hotel; there are even rumours of the sequel to The Wicker Man being filmed with Alain Perrin in starring role.
Now it is to be expected that a proud nation will do its utmost to improve the chances of its sports teams in transnational events. The SPL are by no means the only regulatory body who bend the rules in favour of their members - for example, Shakhtar Donetsk conveniently had their Ukrainian league game at the weekend postponed ahead of tonight's critical group game against Benfica. Where the SPL demonstrate a peculiarly distorted sense of perspective and fair-play is in the selective nature of their positive biases and punishments.
Tonight Celtic play the European champions, Milan, away in a game which is critical to the chances of the Bhoys reaching the next phase of the tournament. Last weekend, while the kickbacks and machinations were being determined behind the scenes in order to allow Rangers, Gretna, the SPL and Setanta to achieve a suitably mutually beneficial structure, Celtic were expected to play a key league match away to Hearts (live on Setanta) and were kicked around the pitch for ninety minutes with minimal protection from the SPL official, Kenny Clark. No sign of Setanta executives suggesting an arrangement "for the good of the country", no input from the SPL to aid one of its member sides and, most disturbingly, no creative thinking and planning by John Reid and the Parkhead board to optimise the possibility of Celtic proceeding.
Since time immemorial, the playing field north of the border has been severely tilted by the massive corruptions of the Scottish FA and the SPL favouring the light blue half of Glasgow over the emerald. All the usual micro-adjustments to a sporting reality have been fine-tuned in Scotland over the recent decades - control of match officials (step forward Hugh Dallas, Stuart Dougal and Clark), the creative timing of player punishment and suspensions, issues relating to the fixture list, ownership of other league members etc etc - and have reached a degree of institutionalised authenticity normally only observed when the likes of Silvio Berlusconi are in the vicinity. If the SPL was to decide only one of the Glasgow greats were in need of their help, one might have thought that Celtic's combination of two massive games in one week (Donetsk and Milan) with a huge league game in between would have been more worthy of SPL support than a Rangers schedule with a two week break between Champions League matches being punctuated by the scary opposition offered by a village that was a non-league team five years ago and one of 'Gers client clubs. But no! Gretna, Killie and Lyon over a fortnight is apparently a bigger obstacle than Donetsk, Milan and Hearts within six days.
This power-play corruption matters not just in sporting success terms. We are in the territory of financial incentives here and the rewards for being No 1 in Scotland are to be markedly greater in the immediate future. Scotland has climbed the rankings and seedings globally based on recent Champions League and UEFA Cup performances (particularly by Celtic) and the overachievement of the national team. From next season, the SPL champions will enter the Champions League Group Stage directly and now is most definitely a good time to be targeting supremacy. The G14(18) with its links to the UEFA Strategy Group are producing the footballing equivalent of musical chairs at the moment. The club power hierarchy in Europe is in a state of flux at all but the very highest levels and Rangers are currently ranked lower than Celtic with all the issues of status and influence which such a gradient implies. The importance of reaching the latter stages of this year's tournament and winning the SPL will yield rewards beyond those of trophies, medals and a short-term cash input. By stating very clearly to UEFA through their actions that one of the national teams is more favoured, the SPL is inducing inappropriate pressures into the integrity of European club competitions.
Scotland is a small country to be deserving of two teams in the Champions League latter stages particularly when there is a likelihood that the major territories of France, Germany and the Netherlands will each have no qualifiers. In the bad old days, UEFA was known to filter the qualifiers to a proprietary hidden agenda put together by the financial suits. One would hope that Platini's UEFA is moving beyond such competition rigging.
Anyway.
Walter Smith is said to be pleased with the free weekend. Given the precedent, the man should be fucking delighted.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
