Green Brigade are playing with fire
O-ONE remembers the last life claimed on Scottish soil by pyrotechnics at a football match.
In March 1996, Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalid Al Qasimi, nephew of Sharjah’s Crown Prince, was watching a game in Dubai when a firecracker thrown from the crowd exploded close to his head.
His right ear ripped off, surgery in an Abu Dhabi hospital improved his condition.
But when he was flown to Scotland for plastic surgery in the old HCI private hospital funded by the Abu Dhabi Investment Company, complications set in and he died at the age of 28 in a room in Clydebank.
I was working on the sports desk of an English-language newspaper in Sharjah at the time, and that tragedy springs to mind every time a fan claims flares and fireworks at football matches are harmless.
Celtic fans continued to push and prod UEFA when they lit flares during last week’s Europa League win over Cluj.
The Parkhead hierarchy have been forced to release a statement appealing to fans to stop doing it. Good luck to them with that.
Celtic’s Green Brigade ultras are set in their view on the issue. No pyros, no party.
They reserve the right to light up the skies as they see fit — and hell mend anyone who tries to stand in their way.
One of the first things a parent teaches a child is that fireworks can do serious damage. The lesson clearly bypassed the self-indulgent attention seekers who populate section 118 at Parkhead.
Forget the team on the pitch; what really matters is that people look at them.
No-one denies that Europe’s governing association make themselves hard to love. Their record on ethics and morality hasn’t always borne close scrutiny. Besides, it’s not the guys who ignite flares or smoke bombs who pay the fines, it’s the suits in the boardroom.
If they want to light flares, they’ll do it. And stuff anyone who tries to stop them.
In Scandinavia, pyrotechnics are part of the football culture. In Denmark, they’ve even tried to police ‘legal pyrotechnics’ to enhance the colour and atmosphere at games.
But the problem in Scotland is more complex in nature. It’s a legal matter.
It’s actually against the law to enter a football ground in this country carrying fireworks, flares, or any sort of pyrotechnics. Anyone doing so should — in theory — face three months in jail.
UEFA also take a dim view on pyrotechnics in grounds hosting their club competitions.
It’s all very well for fans to tell the Swiss bigwigs where they can stick their rulebook. But the Champions League and Europa League are UEFA competitions. It’s their ball, and clubs who enter their competitions do so on the proviso they play by the rules.
Supporters are happy to see Celtic pocket the prize money on offer and spend £9million on Odsonne Edouard.
They can’t have it both ways. If they want to keep taking UEFA’s cash, and stop handing chunks of it back in the form of persistent fines, they must abide by the rules and extinguish the fireworks.
Scotland’s champions have already been fined 17 times by the Nyon authorities since 2007 for misconduct of fans.
The penalties come to a total of around £250,000. When another one comes these days, it barely registers. They arrive so often that people are desensitised to the impact.
Yet Rangers recently discovered how punitive strict liability can be when 3,000 seats were closed off for Europa League games with Legia Warsaw and Feyenoord following racist chants by fans.
Celtic supporters argue there is no comparison between the ‘FTP’ chants of their bitter rivals and letting off a few flares.
Yet to completely discount the possibility of UEFA’s patience running out and a section of Parkhead being closed for a European game is like playing Russian Roulette with a pistol cocked and loaded. The section housing the Green Brigade is where the flares and smoke bombs are usually found.
The truth is that the ultras group have now been humoured and indulged to a point where a spell on the naughty step no longer has much impact, if any.
UEFA’s system of trifling fines has been equally ineffectual.
For strict liability to work, there has to be the threat of a serious penalty for repeated wrongdoing. And Celtic’s statement this week suggests they fear that day is coming.
By testing UEFA’s tolerance of pyrotechnics, the Green Brigade are now playing with fire.