It was not pretty, but for the second time in 2024 Celtic subjugated St Mirren in Paisley and eased into the Scottish Cup quarter finals, where they will face Livingston at home. We now have the potential of three games in Glasgow to win the cup, a prospect which should focus minds. Hampden has been as profitable a venue as Celtic Park for nearly eight years now, we’ve won 24 out of 25 visits. No team has ever had a better Hampden record, including Queen’s Park (renamed Cathkin Park doesn’t count). The business end of the season is insight.
Brendan Rodgers decision to play Adam Idah up front with Kyogo in a withdrawn role played out perfectly. Luis Palma’s 15th minute cross behind Idah was perfect for Kyogo to run onto. The ball had plenty of pace on it, allowing Kyogo to divert its course from 18 yards into the net. Had he been playing as striker, he would not have been in position for this cross.
With the continuing absence of Reo Hatate, pulling Kyogo back one position gives us an added option. It was also refreshing to see Idah get involved in the physical side of the game early on yesterday. This is a quantity we have been without for a while.
Six weeks ago Joe Hart’s suitability for the second half of the season was being debated. Joe can go weeks without making saves that have any consequence on the end result. Since then, he has made outcome determining saves against St Mirren, Hibs, Aberdeen and Ross County. The keeper will hope for a quieter period in the weeks to come.
Stephen Welsh and Liam Scales are not the dream team in central defence, but both have particular strengths in the air. With Idah also in the side we look far more comfortable defending set-pieces. On a park like that in Paisley, defending the air is particularly important.
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“I was just a young Albanian who walked into a big, massive club with a big reputation and big players everywhere and it was a great experience, just great, great, great… Every morning I would wake up happy, just looking forward to going to work at Celtic Park.”
Rudi Vata
Happy Birthday to Rudi!
Now get that son to sign up.
https://wikifoundryimages.s3.amazonaws.com/-Xo-GAlkMf4tE9x6oHIY_w182246
https://wikifoundryimages.s3.amazonaws.com/x9nG4ajgPp2di3MZk3FiHg228051
Playing for Albania at the Parc de Princes in March 1991, Rudi Vata feigned injury, ran down the tunnel, got changed, stuffed $50 into his pocket and made a beeline for a Paris police station where he approached the counter and asked to claim political asylum. The then 22-year-old had not a doubt that what awaited were the “opportunities”, adventures and “freedoms” denied to him in his oppressive eastern European homeland – even if he didn’t know precisely what form these would take.
It wasn’t my fault I was brought up in a dictatorship, but it was my fault if I didn’t do something about it.
Vata is the closest thing to an Albanian-Scot in the footballing sphere that will see these two countries meet for the first time tomorrow, in the Nations League at Hampden. His wife, Anne Frances, and children Ruan, 16, and 13-year-old Rocco – a highly-regarded prospect in Celtic’s academy system – might all be native to his adopted land. However, as Vata features in Albanian television’s coverage of the game, there will be no conflicting loyalties…even if he concedes the night will be “weird” and “strange” for him. “One hundred million per cent I want Albania to win,” he said of the country he represented 59 times across 11 years.Indeed, despite the utter contempt for his country’s rulers that drove him from it – “It might have changed but it suffers from weak government because you can only be a politician if you are corrupt” – he flew the flag for Albania on a football field as no-one had before him. A regime change allowed Vata to return to the international fold 18 months after he had holed up in France playing for lower league Le Mans and Tours. He did so having initially had his asylum bid rejected because as a footballer he wasn’t considered to have been “badly treated, discriminated against or tortured”.
A man-of-the-match performance against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin in 1992 led then Celtic manager Liam Brady to bring him to Glasgow. A period of financial convulsion at the club might have followed, but, in 1995, under Tommy Burns’ management, he featured in the club’s Scottish Cup final success. A triumph that not only lifted a weight for the club following six seasons without silverware, it lifted Vata to a stature beyond any previous Albanian as he became the first player from his country to win a major honour in a western European league.“I don’t know what it meant to anyone in my country, but I know what it meant to me,” he said. “I didn’t expect things to happen so quickly for me, but I signed for one of the biggest clubs in the UK, the first club to win the Champions League [then European Cup] in the UK, and then I won the cup. What happened to me, what I achieved as an Albanian at that time came out of a situation that made it seem almost impossible.”
STOLEN FROM CELTIC WIKI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757192866898563379
Taurangabhoy on 13th February 2024 6:10 am
The Palestinians have not been forcibly removed from 113 countries (and counting)
The world has a problem, and the problem always leads back to those Mongol / Turks who decided to join up with the Judaic faith in the 7th century, not for spiritual enlightenment, but for monetary gain. Sounds familiar.
They cry Anti-Semite whenever they are called out for their atrocities, the dog barking on the street up the road has more Semitic DNA than these thieving charlatans.
People are fed up with these frauds, and it’s high time they were taught a lesson, one that they will not forget in a hurry. It’s time that the rest of the world stood up and put manners on this rag tag tribe of miscreants.
They should be shunned, in the same manner that South Africa was shunned in the 80’s and the same manner that Russia is being shunned at the minute.
Scales is also good at getting on the end of corners
new article posted.