Forget the £30m pot of gold and delusions of grandeur — Old Firm belong in Europa League
FNot much fun for Celtic or Rangers when they’re losing games heavily
OR Celtic and Rangers, Champions League qualifiers are an annual exercise in humiliation. An ordeal so tortuous that £30million pot of gold at the end of the rainbow doesn’t seem nearly enough.
This year, Celtic have been spared the footballing equivalent of waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay. In recent years, they were interrogated by FC Midtjylland, Ferencvaros, Cluj and AEK Athens — and very nearly drowned.
Rangers? Crash out in the third qualifying round to Union SaintGilloise and all the praise and plaudits for reaching the Europa League final in May will be cancelled out in hours.
Strip it down, and Celtic and Rangers are now Europa League clubs. That’s their level. That’s where they look most comfortable. The problem stems from the lingering delusion they should still be mixing it with Europe’s state-sponsored elite.
There’s nothing wrong with a bit of self-belief and ambition. But in a world where UEFA stack the cards to stop clubs from England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France storming off to set up a Super League, they’re kidding themselves. With any luck, the Court of Justice for the European Union will give the European Super League the green light before Christmas and all those fake clubs built on the ill-gotten gains of black gold will clear off and play amongst themselves.
Until then, the relationship between the Champions League and Scotland’s big two will remain much the same as the relationship a dog might have with a lamp post.
Every time Celtic or Rangers fail to qualify, there’s an angry inquest. When everyone calms down there’s a realisation that it’s probably for the best.
After losing to Malmo last season, Rangers slipped into the Europa League and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
They missed out on a pretty huge pile of money and, at first, that was painful.
Just for reaching this season’s group stage, rivals Celtic have already guaranteed themselves £13.162m straight off the bat.
Currently 38th on the ten-year coefficient table, that brings another £7.7m. The share of the television pool is less than it used to be, but still comes in at £6.1m. Like other clubs, there’s a £1.2m subtraction for a Covid rebate payment, but that will be offset comfortably by £6m in gate receipts for three home games.
How much they make after that depends on their final points tally. Win four points in a group and that’s another £3.1m. Reach the last 16 and there’s £8.1m up for grabs.
Say it like that and it sounds like easy money. In reality, there’s a slim chance of Celtic — or Rangers — winning four points in any Champions League group these days. The last time the Parkhead side reached the big stage they were in their quadrupletreble pomp. That didn’t stop them shipping 12 goals in two games to Paris Saint-Germain. They also lost home and away to Bayern Munich.
It’s not much fun losing games heavily and Scotland’s champions could be heading for more of the same this year.
Boss Ange Postecoglou wants to stick with an open, attacking style of football whoever they play and, while that’s great to watch in the SPFL, it’s a risky strategy against Europe’s best. Celtic fans could spend the six games watching through the visors of their crash helmets.
At least the Europa League offers hope of winning a game or two and beefing up the coefficient.
There’s no chance of a humiliating five-goal defeat to the likes of PSG or Bayern because these clubs wouldn’t be seen dead playing there in the first place.
And, if they actually find a way to make it to the final, as Rangers did in May, they can recoup the £30m they lost by crashing out of the Champions League by selling their best players to Ajax and Southampton.
You can probably count the nights of glory Celtic and Rangers have had in the Champions League on two hands. Gordon Strachan took the Parkhead side all the way to the last 16. Beating Manchester United was nice but, on a list of treasured fan memories, losing to Juventus in the first knockout round wouldn’t make the top 50. The really big European nights of the last two decades have come in the UEFA Cup or Europa League.
There is one form of Champions League failure which delivers the best of both worlds.
Schooled by PSG and Bayern in 2017, Celtic’s solitary 3-0 win over Anderlecht in Brussels was enough to secure a third-place finish in the group, a £30m windfall and the safety net of Europa League football after Christmas.
The best any Scottish team can hope for in the Champions League these days is a soft landing.
VIDEO Assistant Referees are coming to Scottish football. And the penalty given against Connor Goldson in midweek tells you that the appliance of science will create as many dust-ups as it solves. There can be no dispute that the ball struck Goldson’s outstretched arm in a 2-0 defeat to Union Saint-Gilloise. The key point is that it happened after a deflection off team-mate Ben Davies at close range. In a rule update issued last season, law makers IFAB seemed to cover this aspect of the highly confusing laws on handball leading to a penalty when they said: ‘Exceptions, eg the player’s arm is already extended when there is no expectation of the ball coming at, or near, the