The Old Firm Not So Firm

August 13, 2012 -- The Old Firm ain’t what it used to be.  As reported in the New York Times last week, the bankruptcy of one half of the Firm, Glasgow Rangers, has forced that storied club into Scotland’s Third Division and stripped its rivalry with the other half, Glasgow Celtic, of much of its glamor.  Some are worried that the entire Premier League may be threatened.

No one seems sure how the Celtic-Ranger relationship became known as the Old Firm, but the competition dates back to 1888 and the two clubs have played nearly 400 times since then.  For many years the games took on sectarian overtones with the Rangers being the Protestant club and Celtic the Catholic side.  In the ‘60s, when Celtic fans took to chanting, “Cel-tic, cha, cha cha,” Rangers supporters were known to respond, “Curse the Pope.  Cha, cha, cha.”  Sports Illustrated reported in January 1963 that a local joke held that Rangers had more fans because it was easier to say, “Curse the Pope,” than “Curse the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.”

Violence was an unfortunate by-product of the intensity of the teams’ fans.  In 1980 opposing fans fought on the field after Celtic won a 1-0 Cup final.

On Saturday Debbie and I saw half of the Old Firm – Celtic – play in a lackluster friendly against Real Madrid at the Linc in Philadelphia.  Real won, 2-0, but neither team's play was inspiring and the match had all the intensity of the NHL all-star game.  Fans would have rioted had Cristiano Ronaldo not played at all, but he seemed to go through the motions for the 58 or so minutes he was on the field.

The crowd was reported at 34,018 but seemed less.  Marc Narducci reported for The Inquirer and told me he thought “some of these friendlies have run their course.”  You can’t blame the teams.  Just as the MLB teams do in spring training, they are concerned with tuning up for their upcoming season by getting some fitness under match conditions for some players, trying out some new players and just getting some touches on the ball for others.

Real led 1-0 at the half on a goal by Jose Maria Callejon and I asked a Celtic fan if he thought his team had played awful in the first half.  He assured me they were a second half club, but they were only marginally better in the last 45 minutes.  But in fairness to Celtic, they had just played in Sweden three nights earlier and six key players did not make the trip across the ocean, giving an idea of how unimportant the game was to them

There was a scary moment in the 72^nd minute when young Dylan McGeouch collided hard with Madrid’s Nuri Sahin and lay motionless on the field for five minutes before being carried off on a stretcher and taken to a hospital.  It was reported on the team’s website Sunday that he suffered a broken jaw but would travel back to Scotland with the team.