The Best

 

The Best

Celtic’s deserved victory in the League Cup Final over Rangers brought their trophy hall of major honours to an astonishing  114.  With 52 leagues, 40 cups, 21 league cups and of course the European cup on the board, The Hoops are on course to become the most decorated club in Scottish football history. There are some who claim that they already are given that they have now won higher percentage of tournaments entered than any other Scottish side; Rangers (1872-2012 edition) had a 15 year start on Celtic in the Scottish cup yet Celtic are well ahead in that competition.

If you look at the list of clubs with large tallies of domestic title wins, you’ll soon see that they mostly come from smaller countries where a small number of big clubs dominate. Linfield FC currently have 56 league titles, the most in the world. This would almost certainly have been less had their main rivals, Belfast Celtic, not left the league in the late 1940s after reprehensible violence against their players in a match with Linfield. At that point in their history, Belfast Celtic had 14 titles to their name (to Linfield’s 18) and were one of the biggest and best supported teams in the league. Today, Linfield’s average crowd is around 2700.

In Egypt, Al Ahly have won 42 of the 63 titles competed for; that is around 67% of all titles have been won by this one club. Their overall trophy haul in Egypt eclipses anything seen in Scotland but what does that say about the relative strength of the two leagues? Celtic brushed Al Ahly aside in the Wembley Tournament in 2009 with a comfortable 5-0 win. Celtic fans have known for a long time that the real test of their team is in European football and that arena is becoming more challenging as finances are increasingly accurate predictors of who will do well. The later stage of the Champions League is increasingly seeing the same old faces every year.

As a fan though, I look forward to Celtic smashing Scotland’s all time trophy records.  Apart from local bragging rights, it may then put an end to this nonsensical talk of a Scottish club being the ‘most successful in the world.’ Real Madrid have won 21 European trophies as well as 8 world club championships, how can winning trophies in a small European league like the SPFL be compared to that? Don’t get me wrong, I love it every time Celtic wins another honour and see the sweat and effort the team puts into winning. Like most Celtic supporters though, I do not want to see cringey banners with ‘going for 55’ or ‘most successful club ever’ scrawled on them. Of course, there will be wind ups of the opposition if and when Celtic win a few more trophies but in reality, we recognise that much of their hollow boasting about ‘55’ etc, was actually aimed at deflecting from the hard reality (for them) that their club went bust in 2012.

Football is going through an odd phase at the moment where even in the big leagues, the level of competition seems to be diminishing. Bayern are currently looking for their 11^th successive title in Germany, a feat unheard of before. Juventus completed 9 in a row in Italy in 2020 and in France, PSG have won the league in 8 of the past 10 seasons. Even the cash bloated English premiership can realistically only be won by 3 or 4 clubs.

Money is increasingly calling the tune and Europe’s bigger clubs are again rumbling about a super league. This time the suggestion is 80 teams in ten leagues of 8. Each team would be guaranteed 14 European matches. For a club like Celtic, their UEFA coefficient might drag them into the 6^th or 7^th division (they are 56th in the co-efficient table) of such a competition. Based on these current coefficients, they could face the likes of Zenit, Real Sociedad, Monaco and Galatasaray. It would guarantee a huge lift in revenue for Celtic but might interest wane in the domestic league? Or would they have a big enough squad to deal with both?

This is all speculation at the moment, but the idea won’t go away. If the Scottish league continues to be relatively uncompetitive, then Europe, with all its glamour and TV money looks an attractive option for a club like Celtic, constricted in a low revenue environment. One English fan said online recently, with typical arrogance, that winning the Scottish league is like being voted the best dressed man in the doss house. We’ve grown used to the almost pathological disdain for our game among some in England but it is clear that many there do see the SPFL as two bald men fighting over a comb.

We who avidly watch the game here see it differently. The raw passion and ancient rivalries make it better than many realise. The fans support the game with such passion and commitment and there are some decent players plying their trade in Scotland, but the Achilles’ heel of our game is the domination of the honours by two clubs who are, in essence, too big for the league they are in.

That being said, I’ll still enjoy my football and will still take great pleasure in every honour Celtic wins. I won’t be claiming any world records though or suggesting that my club is the world’s most successful team. I’ll leave that nonsense to those with more of an inferiority complex.

To me, my club will always be the best and I don’t need any hollow boasts about trophies won to feel that.