Celtic 0-1 Dinamo Moskva
29th July 2009
match report
Euro hopes scattered like cushions
Collecting my match ticket the night before the game was
both a milestone occasion for me and yet also very unsettling. Sitting
on my mate Michael’s couch, I was distracted from looking at the
precious Champions League ticket by constantly fidgeting and struggling
with my seating position.
This was truly a milestone occasion as this would be my
1st match back at Paradise in over a season! Forget about the Credit
Crunch understandably killing off season ticket renewals for many fans,
the arrival of our 2nd child swallowed up every piece of spare time in
our lives to the point that neither my wife or I could make a single
match last season. Nappies, teething, crawling and feeding ensured that
our affiliation with Celtic was confined to Setanta (remember them?),
Sky Sports, a 2nd half grabbed in a nearby pub, or a 1st half listened
to eagerly on a car radio. So to finally get a chance of a holiday from
work, combining with my mate heading to Italy for a wedding and his
ticket becoming available, and my wife being able to deal with the kids
while she’s waiting to start her new job, it was truly an alignment of
miracle proportions. And yet, this moment of synchronisity was being
ruined by the most annoying and uncomfortable feeling underneath.
The couch, indeed both couches I now realised, were
covered with a mass of new green scatter cushions! I hate cushions!
It’s one of those mental feminine hobbies that I find both illogical and
unnecessary, and has led to many a ‘debate’ with my wife at home. I
therefore began to cheekily berate Michael’s wife for this textile
invasion, while she sat having her glamorous hair sculpted by her
personal hairdresser – I kid you not; this is the kind of upper-class
friends I have to aspire to, don’t you know! She gave a cheeky smile in
reply and gladly announced that it was Michael himself who had purchased
and installed the cushions.
If you’ve ever had one of those awkward moments with a
good mate that you’ve long thought of as a kindred, masculine soulmate
with a healthy interest in alcohol, fitba and the feminine form, and who
suddenly tells you that he’s coming out of a certain closet or is
retiring as an oil rigger to become a florist, you’ll appreciate the
tension that I suddenly felt in the room. I made my excuses, paid my
thanks for the ticket without actually making eye contact, and promptly
headed for the door. Celtic after all, awaited my return.
The brethern of the Carluke Shamrock C.S.C. milled
around outside The Crown in the evening sunshine awaiting for the first
home bus of the season. A trip down under and a Wembley Cup (won of
course!) had been the only recent distraction. Now it was down to
business, back at home, and straight into a European match against
Russian visitors! So bring on the victory bus to Paradise was the cry…
Twenty minutes later, the coach finally arrived to a
chorus of discontent from the mildly liquored guests, much to the
amusement of a broadly grinning Well-fan – our long trusted “Watty” –
trusted that is, to be late, always.
I may have missed an entire season of travelling with
the club but certain things had obviously not changed during my
absence. The arrival of the fashionably-late driver easily laid the
foundation of the banter heading along the M74 into the traffic-coned
avenues of London Road.
“Aye very good Watty ya nugget! That’ll be a breach of
contract I think” mocked a seated guest.
“Shut it, you’ve only ever been to two games anyway ya
clown”, replied our unruffled driver.
“Aye, but you’ve got a 100% record of being late to both
those games ya Hun!” came the retort.
With the witty dialogue dealt with, bus fees collected,
and football cards completed, scratched and won, the bus jolted to a
halt close to Paradise. The entire Commonwealth Games preparation area
of the East End had been transformed beyond all recognition for me.
Flats and apartments filled every piece of space from ground to sky.
Lane changes, road adjustments and traffic signals appeared from every
angle. Thank goodness for some recognisable sights to keep me
acclimatised: the tatty exterior of the Association club; back-turned
fans relieving themselves against hoardings and fences; and the dodgy
‘car park assistants’ who seemed to jump out from every pavement crack
to collect pound coins for fans’ cars parked on pavements, grass and
factory space. And finally, the salubrious entrance of rot iron fencing
of The Belvidere Bowling Club. Pennies in the box, autographs scribbled
in the visitors book, endless queues to the bar, bottles of beer grabbed
quickly from the overworked bar, then outside into the ‘garden’ for some
drinks and chat.
The time came for the march to the temple and I was
feeling in good spirits. The miserable end of last season ripped a lot
of passion out of football for me. I was, and remain, absolutely
convinced that we had faced a lifetime opportunity to destroy our city
rivals for a generation. Everything had come into alignment – the
Murray Moonbeams had been extinguished; the false dawns of PLG and the
Watty Sequel were being exposed as distateful football; the rampaging
Orcs were being hounded by Police, UEFA and media like no time before;
every inch of the financial disaster the club was in, was being
investigated and ridiculed in detail; and before us lay one of the
oldest, most miserable and pathetic Rangers teams we have EVER seen.
So, like our poor Celtic team and club had been destroyed for 9 seasons
in the 90’s, we now had our chance with a Hun club lying on its
deathbed. But as history shows, instead of pulling the plug, we meekly
knelt down beside their deathbed and gave them CPS.
Every single level of our club had blown it – directors
tightening purse strings when a single purchase could have made all the
difference; a manager consistently tinkering with squads and tactics,
seemingly unaware of his own thoughts and plans; and players unable to
easily quash such a pathetic Rangers team and instead blowing 7-point
leads on more than one occasion.
That abject failure had ripped out most of the passion
and wartime psychology I had following Celtic. It was now much more
diluted, reduced to a simple appreciation of the game and our place
within it. I feared that my spirit had been so destroyed that I
wouldn’t feel ANYTHING anymore with the hoops. I needn’t have worried.
The banter was good, the company was enjoyed, and I had
a much more relaxed calm approach to the match ahead. But as I turned
that last corner under the “405″ sign inside the north stand to the
final chorus of You’ll Never Walk Alone, I was stopped dead in my tracks
with emotion. I had started to unconsciously whistle along to the tune
as I heard it sang on my long hike upstairs within the bowels of the
stadium. However, on that last turn I then saw the majesty of the
hooped support revealed to me. A sea of scarves swept from left to
right covering every line of sight in front of me. The chorus of voices
now hammered my senses in front, and also swept around behind me like
some enormous cinema surround sound that Mr Dolby could only dream of.
I literaly stopped dead at the mouth of the tunnel, much to the
annoyance of the over-eager steward on duty, and gazed at the army of
fans in front of me. Young, tiny boys with no idea of the painful years
of support ahead of them; teenaged boys flirting between Celtic and
girls for their devotion; married men and couples standing side by side;
and elderly father figures stood and grasping their scarves aloft with
tight, aged hands that could tell of decades of support. It was a
timely and reassuring moment that convinced me that my support and
connection with the club had some immovable core that would never be
fully eradicated no matter how many times the club might let me down, or
events would conspire to bring me heartache or reality-checks.
The moment over and the game quickly ensued with hooped
and blue shirts swarming over the pitch far below. A tiny pocket of
Russian fans occupied the south-east stand beyond, chanting on their
team but easily drowned out by the incessant chants and prayers to
Tully, Murdoch, Auld and Hay. Not too many instances took up the first
few minutes as both teams poked and prodded.
I was eager to view the new recruits N’Guemo and Fortune
but it was the blue-shirted No.10 – Alexander Kerzhakov – who was
starting to catch the eye. A few twist and turns by Maloney on the left
flank and some fairly strong runs by Fortune brought the crowd to its
feet, while the wandering positions of our full-backs started to raise
blood pressures and concerns in equal measure.
And then it happened, like a lot of Celtic European
mishaps take shape – early on, quite surreal, very painful, and almost
without anyone really noticing. The ball had bundled around very
innocently over on the far right wing and then somehow, somehow, managed
to get pushed goalwards, nutmeg Gary Caldwell and then get poked under
Artur Boruc by a Moskovite wearing the ridiculously high number 99 on
his back. Most of the crowd took a double-take, as did the Celtic
players realising they were now a goal down somehow, and the realisation
was then finished by the Russians, who suddenly realised their luck. It
was a real non-event and quite bizzare.
And so, in quite typical Celtic-European fashion, we
began the chasing. The 1st half can only be remembered for the
incredible misses. Looking back I took from the midfield the highlights
of NGuemo’s passion, running and involvement in the game, and the
lowlights were the hiding exploits of Mr Donati and his fancy white
boots, that seemed to help him hide all the easier somehow.
At the back, the positional sense of Hinkel and Loovens
was terrifyingly easy for the Russians to exploit. Caldwell’s
long-range passing was bewildering, as was Boruc’s failure to kick or
throw the ball out from goal without passing it to the opposition or
make the passes look like assaults on the tiny figures of Maloney and
McGeady. Naylor completed the untidy defence as usual, and was only
replaced by new bhoy Fox late on in the match.
Up front is where it really showed in the 1st period.
We had fought back from our shocking loss by eventually (and I really
mean eventually after so many times just running right into defence)
making some nice chances. But our front guys weren’t there to exploit.
Skippy seemed to be ‘the hole’ rather than playing in the hole, he was
so absent. McGeady got on the ball a few times but did nothing with
it. And Fortune had a very inauspicous home debut where his misses
would have had the Scottish football media salivating over the headline
shockers they could write. It’s only one home match and we will
undoubtedly give him time to settle and see if he can add deadliness to
his running and holding skills, but the hacks would have been loving the
easy comparison of the multi-million pound attacker’s lanky frame and
profligacy in front of goal, easily being drawn to a certain Mr T Andre
Flo. Come on Marc, prove them wrong this season!
The shocking misses continued for the 2nd half and we
could easily have won 2 or 3 games if we had taken them all. Balls
skying over the bar (Maloney), sitters bashed into the ground (Fortune),
shots cracked off players instead of the net (Hinkel), and easy headers
aimed straight at the keeper (Samaras) – we just kept blowing it time
and again. Heads were being held in hands on many, many occasions.
Apart from the twisting and turning of Maloney, at least
in the 1st half, there was not a single sign of invention from Celtic.
The Russians were never going home with headaches from working out our
cunning ploys. Rigid in position (or out of them if you’re looking at
defenders) we barely moved, unless to move a few yards closer to collect
a pass. No overlaps, no swaps, no decoys, no position changes, no
harrying, no running. Endless routines of repeated failed passes and
the most shocking crosses. Eventually, we even became bored with our
own lack of creation and in the 2nd half we resorted to a full-on
back-to-front high ball assualt – very worrying.
The Russians were no great shakes but they contained us
very easily. It could all have been different if some of those early
chances were taken of course. Their tempo and rhythm was a thousand
times better than ours, but that’s to be expected from them being so far
into their own season – we’re still on the beaches from close-season.
They easily snuck in behind our full backs and weren’t afraid to crack
shots from outside the box – unlike us. A more creative team could
easily unravel them. The obstacle is we only have another week to work
that one out. Our headlong rush into Europe before we’ve even finished
our friendly schedules, highlights more consequences from our abject
failure last season – we’ve brought it all on ourselves.
Can we do a Motherwell of being beaten by 1 and then
scoring 8 in the next match? Can Mr Mowbray expedite his understanding
of the personnel he has at his disposal? Can new guys Fox, NGuemo and
Fortune get in and turn it on in record time? Only time will tell, and
not much time at that.
Leaving the ground and eventually leaving the bus park –
a new tactic we tried with our infamous coach driver taking personal
slight at the bus park stewards on the way out and almost causing an
incident before being cajoled into peace by his passengers – I reviewed
my feelings after a game very much a ‘once in a blue moon’ affair for me
these days. I was disappointed at the result and our performance and
slightly worried for the return match. Yet at the same time I had found
reassurance.
Yes, as feared the wild unbound passion and fighting
spirit had definitely been diluted by last year’s fiasco. Yet in its
place now remained a calm but very definite knowledge that Celtic still
remain in my heart. In place of the wild, illogical, heart-thumping,
do-or-die following to the death, is a much more peaceful, enjoyable
certainty that Celtic hasn’t and can’t ever, leave me. Each match is
much better prioritised, I have a reality sense of our position in world
football and finances, and I have a healthy realisation of where my
support stands in relation to family, friends, humour and life. A calm
sense of unarguable certainty that Celtic will always be a part of me,
that I couldn’t walk away from football, and that I certainly couldn’t
support any other team. And it’s a really nice feeling to have during
such uncertain times. Moscow awaits…..
Yours in Celtic,
Richard
carlukeshamrock.com
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