During Celtic’s Europa League play-off tie against VfB Stuttgart, tennis balls were thrown onto the pitch by some supporters as a method of protest against the board. The game was stopped for a few minutes, and Martin O’Neill shared his true thoughts on what happened.
Speaking to the media after the match, he said:
“Anybody who thinks that’s a good idea needs their heads examined, really. I’ve got to say I do.
I’ve been a manager here at this football club when teams like Juventus were scared stiff coming, scared stiff. There was a cause that embraced players, managers, crowd. The whole thing. And that there isn’t it.
Can you imagine being a Stuttgart player now, thinking you come on, you’re on five or six minutes, you’re worried about the crowd. The atmosphere, to begin with, was fantastic, really, and then suddenly that happens.
One, it disrupts the game for a start, obviously. And secondly, if I’m a Stuttgart player, I’m thinking, yeah, we don’t feel too bad here. Don’t feel too bad. Instead of being intimidated by the situation and things that you see. That helps no one.”
The simple reality though is that no matter which side of the debate you’re on, whether you agree with protests or not, it wasn’t the fans who decided the result tonight. We aren’t the ones who lost 4-1. It was the players, and it was O’Neill’s decision to continue to play an out-of-form Kasper Schmeichel, who was directly responsible for two of the visitors’ goals.
Right now, it feels to a lot of supporters as though the division within the club isn’t being helped by people like the manager coming out and defending a board who are not fit for purpose. You don’t need to be a financial or football expert to understand that they are incompetent in their roles.
But with time ticking and protests clearly proving ineffective, it seems as though we are never going to get through this difficult period. As Stan Petrov said, Celtic are becoming an “ordinary” club, and change is desperately needed.
What now?
With plenty of intense fixtures coming up, we need to be at the top of our game. We are all but out of the Europa League, but there are still two trophies to play for domestically.
One thing we can pray for is that the disappointing defeat hasn’t dampened the players’ spirits too much. They should come back fighting against Hibernian at the weekend, and fingers crossed that we’ll see the correct mentality on display.
The Green Brigade are still banned from accessing games, as are fan media. A meeting with the club from representatives yielded no result, with club officials stating that they don’t even know who put the fan media ban in place. A state from top to bottom, but let’s pray that a resolution is in sight.