Rangers “is a football club with a poison somewhere at its core”
Comment and analysis round up
Quote of the day: “Let’s see what happens after the Champions League final… I am feeling calm here [Manchester United]. I’m happy but in the future I don’t know. I know Real Madrid like how I play and I know that other teams in Spain like my game as well, so that’s good. It is good to know that other clubs are interested in you. I have said millions of times that I would love to play in Spain.” - Cristiano Ronaldo.
Runner-up: “Of all the signings I’ve made, the most important thing I did when I came to Celtic was bring Tommy [Burns] into the coaching team. Through his intelligence, common sense and humour, he made me understand what Glasgow was all about. Without him, I would have gone off my head. Tommy kept me sane at times.” - Gordon Strachan.
Today’s overview: Rangers FC find themselves the subject of intense criticism this morning for the thuggish scenes of violence which have emerged following their UEFA Cup final defeat on Wednesday night. Looking forward, there are previews of the FA Cup final, with Cardiff’s wunderkid Aaron Ramsey coming in for special attention across the backpages. The final weekend of the Serie A season is also reviewed, with the breaking news at Inter Milan that the club’s tailor is a convicted murderer who is close to the Crisafulli Mafia clan.
According to Alexandra Williams (Telegraph) “Al-Qa’eda sympathisers are threatening to attack the Euro 2008 football tournament next month, according to Swiss police.” “Switzerland has been widely accused of Islamophobia in the Muslim world, notably because of opposition to the construction of mosque minarets in several Swiss cities. Austria could also be a target because of the presence of its troops in the international force in Afghanistan.”
The behaviour of the Rangers’ fans during the week is lambasted by Graham Spiers in The Times. “This is a football club with a poison somewhere at its core… In particular, bigoted or sectarian chanting remains an excruciating pastime for too many Rangers supporters, despite repeated pleas by the club to give these anthems a rest. For two days in Manchester, if you were based in the city centre as I was, you woke up to these dirges in the morning and you went to sleep to them at night.”
Rangers come under further bitter criticism from Professor Alan Bairner, of Loughborough University’s School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, as reported by Kevin Eason (The Times). Money quote: “The reputation of Rangers fans stretches back to the 1970s and is distinctly different from the Tartan Army. There has been a problem for a long time and perhaps the events in Manchester will now mean that something is done, because Rangers have the biggest problem in British football.”
Ahead of Saturday’s FA Cup final, Nwankwo Kanu speaks with the Independent’s Jason Burt about his new football foundation in Africa. Money quote: “For years, African players have been exploited. I know a lot who have suffered and the foundation is going to have a big responsibility.”
Staying in the Independent, James Corrigan picks out Cardiff’s starlet Aaron Ramsey for analysis. “Aaron Ramsey is the boy with the world at his feet who tomorrow will be determined to make the world gasp at his feat of becoming the youngest FA Cup winner in the 136-year history of the competition. At 17 years, 144 days, Ramsey will wipe Paul Allen from the record books should Cardiff City beat Portsmouth.” (Aaron Ramsey is also featured in the Daily Mail and the Guardian.)
Sachin Nakrani (Guardian) catches up with Sol Campbell. Money quote: “I’ve also been enjoying my football more since I came here but that doesn’t mean there isn’t pressure, there is pressure wherever you play. Arsenal always needed to win but the guys here also want to win, we don’t just want to be mid-table every year, we want to keep pushing on and see what we can get out of our careers.”
Henry Winter (Telegraph) picks up on the forthright comments of PFA chief Gordon Taylor, who acknowledges that club football trumps international honours. According to Talyor, “The problem for Fabio Capello is that the Champions League is the No 1 priority for players now… We can’t call ourselves a major football country if we can’t qualify for the European Championships. This has to be the year when people realise we have to focus on the national squad.”
The Sun’s Steven Howard splashes with a classic over-hyped piece, telling us that “It’s confirmed — money has finally driven English football mad. The incontrovertible proof came with the news Birmingham’s Olivier Kapo had rewarded his bootboy for 12 months’ elbow grease with the keys to his £30,000 Mercedes.”
Harry Pearson uses his weekly column in the Guardian to applaud the fact that “just when you thought you’d seen the last of real football fans, they return in all their militant glory.” “For some while I had considered him and his ilk a dying breed, wiped out by an allergic reaction to seats, adequate lavatories, balloons or face-painting. Listening to Blues fans hurling abuse at Gold and Sullivan, and Man City supporters protesting against the sacking of Sven, however, was proof that I was wrong.”
The excellent Shaka Hislop (Guardian) credits the important contribution that “John Barnes, Chris Kamara, Gary Bennett, Viv Anderson, Garth Crooks and many more before and after” in tackling racism in football, but noting that much more needs to be done. “[This] has been highlighted this week by the appearance in the Uefa Cup final of Zenit St Petersburg, whose fans are notorious for racism. Islamaphobia has been much more prominent since the September 11 attacks, and anti-Semitism has raised its ugly head again. So we must never think we have cured the problem.”
Heading into the final weekend of the Serie A season, Malcolm Moore (Telegraph) reports on the latest series of scandals which have hit table-toppers Inter Milan. “With only days to go until a nail-biting end to this year’s Serie A, Inter Milan found itself caught up in a Mafia scandal… Yesterday, the club’s tailor, Domenico Brescia, 55, was revealed to be a convicted murderer who is close to the Crisafulli Mafia clan… The leak of the documents at such a sensitive time provoked a storm of outrage among Inter’s fans, who insisted that the media was trying to unsettle the team. In recent days, Luis Figo has been targeted by protestors after he allegedly ran over an unlucky black cat on purpose.”
Staying in Italy, Football Italia’s James Horncastle insists we are about to witness the most exciting weekend in Calcio history. “Forget the statistics detailing how the Premiership has seen more goals than any of the other top European Divisions, ignore the smug, cognac swilling grins of English fans who point to their championship’s ‘exhilarating’ end, because nowhere, and I mean nowhere is it as finely balanced as on the peninsula written off as dishonest and corrupt.”
The LA Times offer the transfer headline of the day, Grahame L. Jones announcing that Sven-Goran Eriksson could be the next manager of Mexico. “Can a pale 60-year-old coach from Sweden with a reputation for womanizing really be what Mexico is thinking?… Rumors were flying this week, especially in the Spanish-language media, that Eriksson was about to be appointed as the successor to Hugo Sanchez, who in March joined the scrapheap of former Mexico coaches.”
The Telegraph’s Scottish football correspondent Roddy Forsyth eulogises over the life of Tommy Burns, who yesterday lost his battle with cancer. “The affection he drew from those of us who knew him over many years, as well as those whose acquaintance was rather slighter, was a reflection of his manifest integrity, a wicked sense of humour and a profound religious faith that he managed both to wear lightly and yet employ as the guiding principle of his life.”
