They were an icon against fascism, a club representative of a people, more than any national identity could ever be. We saw commonalities between Barcelona and our own heritage. While we did what we could to earn a seat at the top table, they packed out the biggest club stadium in Europe and were invariably second, third, or sometimes first in the football money league.
Catalan prosecutors have revealed that over a 17 year period, Barcelona paid €8.4m to the former vice-president of the Spanish refereeing committee, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, and his company. The payments are not disputed, the former referee VP, claims the club employed him to ensure fairness.
He said, “I saw [Barcelona presidents] at most six times a year so they were calm that there were no decisions against FC Barcelona in the arbitration committee, that everything was neutral.” The club claim they paid the money for Negreira to compile video reports to compliment information required by coaching staff.
Former Barcelona presidents, Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu, face corruption charges, the former recently spent two years in prison on separate charges before being acquitted on appeal. The club’s current president, Joan Laporta, has not been indicted, although the story has a long way to run.
Compared to what happened in Scotland – disguised renumeration and undisclosed contracts to dodge taxes and gain a sporting advantage, paying millions to a referee chief – even if you accept either parties’ version of events, is on a different level. Perhaps only Juventus can compete with what for so many of us was an iconic bastion of goodness in the game.
Although corruption exists in football, it is rare to see payments directly between parties who should never have such commercial dealings. More commonly, this type of payment would go through a third party. The industry is a heady environment for ambitious lawyers, who make up a sizeable portion of the players’ agent industry. They commonly invoice significant fees to club and can easily pay equally significant fees out for other professional services.
You may know it goes on, but even if you had all the paperwork, proving what happened was something sinister can be impossible. Which is why this is so shoddy, lazy, even. It is time for us to stop pretending modern sport is some bastion of 19th century ethical endeavours and accept that law breaking, organised crime and plain old bias cannot reach our fields. To believe otherwise does our athletes and the paying customer a disservice.
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Coneybhoy,
Earlier teams’ players didn’t have the same number for the season, e.g. Big Yogi might be 9 or 11 or, if, e.g. Big Billy was injured, John Cushley would have 5 on his shorts. Favourite, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean the best.
My favourite 11 is: Simpson, McGrain and Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeil and Connolly, Johnstone, McStay, McBride, Gallagher and Auld.
Oh, dear! I am a stupid bhoy.
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Scullybhoy
Smart one on TB as he wore both numbers👍
I struggled on 4 as there have been a lot of poor 4s but loads of great 5s. Gutted Rieper was a 5
Parkheadcumsalford
That gives great leeway but modern players miss out due to squad number. Wanted Tierney but a 63
JinkyRS
Ah dont be sad if you grew up watching those players,jinky,bobby etc,i only got from ’70 onwards and that was bitty as to which adult took me.;-) what a privelege you had watching the best who also happened to be our team Celtic :-)
Scullybhoy
Top pics mate
HH
Then again….
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Petec
Massive Attack were great, didn’t know anyone from any background who didn’t like them
My new Depeche Mode red vinyl album is on its way; that has me more excited than the Sco v Cyp game😎
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Big Jimmy – congrats.
If I am reading your post correctly you bet £4 total today and got back £374 ?
Genuine statement: you should write a book with a highly original uncontentious title like
“How to beat the parasitic bookies at their own game by a guy who has done just that without really trying”
Would it sell ?
In droves !
Canamalar
“because you, with your superior knowledge ……………………….has deemed it so,”
——————————————-
I’m in and out again quite quickly tonight but I am beginning to see your difficulties. After accusing me of “insisting” on this blog, I am now dictating what counts again. It’s an easier way to deal with the issue than argue the point, I suppose.
Without revealing any private information, I’ll stand my ground and argue about what constitutes the scientific method and why it is good to double check research by having interesting studies, fact-checked, method-studied and then, replicated before you carefully advance any hypothesis. I am informed in that area. On microbiology, medicine, molecular chemistry etc; I am an uninformed infant ( I did pass a test on Elementary Human Physiology at Uni though, so I may know my arse from my elbow, at least 50% of the time).
The Grundy study on mRNA was published in a non-peer researched journal. No great harm in that, but publication is not proof. I wasn’t dismissing Grundy; other qualified researchers did post reservations after they looked at his methodology. So far, so normal. The other experts in the field will pick up on any interesting finding and re-test it to see if it was a one-off fluke caused by poor methodology or, indeed, a fake caused by doctored results. Until the article goes through that process, it is just an interesting idea, not a fact. This you should know and as spelling it out can get boring quickly (too late says most of CQN) I’ll move on to the main point.
Before this interesting finding on mRNA had a chance to be fact-checked, methodology critiqued or replicated. Dr. John (and I’m a big fan of his music) was launching this as an interesting finding and one the Orthodoxy viewpoint should consider- and he is right. But when every right wing source that picked up on this “interesting idea” it got turned into an accepted fact and finding. They started citing the number of young footballers and athletes who reported heart issues , not being too careful to discern whether they had the vaccine or not, and not being too careful, as in the case of Rod Stewart’s son to determine whether it was a heart issue of the type they were asked to look at.
They used the non-scientific reasoning of “this can’t be a coincidence” and “no smoke without fire” to pass on the message to like minded souls that they were right and the vaccine causes more harm than good. Not one of them researched whether heart issues were a thing with footballers or athletes were a thing before Covid was a thing. We could have told them about Asa Hartford, Graeme Souness, Marc-Vivien Foe and even Evander Sno, if they had their ears open.
But no, this lie or unproven finding was half way round the world and leading to more Covid skepticism and a higher risk from low take up in the case of any Covid comeback or the next related or unrelated epidemic we suffer. They did this because they always do this. The Bannonites and the Dominic Cummings of this world will tell you that it is more effective to appeal to the heart and the gut than to the head. Scaring someone affects their behaviour more effectively than ediucating them to make an informed choice. The “do their own research” crowd just cut corners and instead of replicating and stress testing their view, they just get others to amplify it. So several hundred sources repeat the one unestablished interesting finding and it appears to be corroborated but it hasn’t been yet and they don’t have the patience to wait for it.
My position is, that if the Grundy findings get re-tested and replicated, not only will I change my attitude but so will the more informed community who stress test this so that mavericks like Andrew Wakefield don’t thrive again (he’s happy enough with his supermodel partner now anyway and his alt-right fanboys).
So, I don’t dismiss it and I don’t label Dr. John a snake oil salesman, that applied to Trump and Dr. Oz and several others. I will await the research which will confirm one way or another. I will not let confirmation bias get in the way.
But, neither will I be rushing to shoot down a Washington Pizza Parlour because several people , from the same sources, “did their own research” and found it was a a paedophile front, run by all of their favourite supervillains, Soros, Gates, Clinton etc; . The same people who hound parents of dead high school students because they want to believe that “crisis actors” played the dead, and the same people who readily post videos of events suggesting crisis acting and duplicity in Ukraine but don’t even bother to use videos taken from the war in that land.
They just fall for it time and time again, get themselves worked up into a fury, and want to hang Mike Pence, or Dr. Fauci or shoot a Pizza restaurant manager or knife a Labour MP.
When that side of the culture wars starts to profess an interest in microbiology, I exercise scepticism (Dr. John was just adopted by them rather than being one of them)
Just be careful you don’t get dragged down into worshipping the Big Strong Man whose gonna take all your decisions for you- even if he does proclaim himself a Family worshipping Christian Alpha Male, while in reality he’s a fat orange Mafia-assisted, property speculator, grossly overweight and underinformed and needs ghost writers to pen anything other than a rambling twitter post.
Thise people are not your friends. They are the modern day Nativists, Know-Nothings, who will turn on the Catholics and Workers just after they have finished with the Jews. It’s an age old story.
Food is ready and I’m out this evening. Take care all and apologies for the non-football reply. I will be talking about Scotland tomorrow.
“Compared to what happened in Scotland – disguised renumeration and undisclosed contracts to dodge taxes and gain a sporting advantage, paying millions to a referee chief – even if you accept either parties’ version of events, is on a different level”.
Yes, thankfully there’s no evidence of influencing/bribing refs in Scotland…………..yet.
Scrolling
Dundalk 8.30-Sunset Nova E/W
Bet responsibly
GM
You don’t have to bribe Scottish refs; bone of our bone etc
a few thems 1-11s ……….
wot no LUBO ?
CONEYBHOY on 24TH MARCH 2023 6:33 PM
GM
You don’t have to bribe Scottish refs; bone of our bone etc
———–
SOME PICTURES CIRCULATING TO REMIND US,
when celtic go up to lift a cup, always check out the demeanour and body language of the blazers who are handing out the prizes, raging, fizzing, girnin, canny crack a smile.
then check out the officials getting their medals, never a happy face.
roon them
i will never tire of us winning things, never.
St Stivs
A controversial quiz, deliberately😎
Numbers on shorts, jumpers for goalposts?
St Stivs
1988 SCF was a classic; but Roy a gentleman as always
I remember a weekend trip to Largs when i was 12 and we met Aitken and McCloy walking down the prom
Loved everything about that
Both had bad haircuts, to be fair
Paul Brennan’s can speak with authority on the subject of corruption having been provided with proof of it which was also presented to Peter Lawwell and Michael Nicholson in the presence of blogger James Forrest and CSA Vice President John Andrews in Aug 2018.
However things have moved on since then and developments in England following the Fans Review of English Football led by Tracey Crouch have been closely watched by The Scottish Football Supports Association (SFSA) whom I’ve been involved in since 2018 after that meeting told me Celtic not interested or not able to act and the SFSA review will be launched at Holyrood next month.
The TC review has a number of recommendations that would go some way towards addressing the issues set out at
https://thecelticblog.com/2023/03/articles-and-features/the-barcelona-scandal-celtic-and-a-sport-which-continues-to-tell-itself-comforting-lies/#respond
which enable corruption and adopting them or some of them in Scotland is a no brainer.
However it will have to come from the Scottish Government placing the Tracey Crouch recommendations under Scottish law since the SFA, as demonstrated in pursuit of Res12 and exposure of LNS sham, have too much to hide.
Turkeys don’t vote etc.
My considered view after August 2018 is that it is a football wide issue that Celtic can influence but not lead on and that supporters of all clubs in Scotland will have more to gain and little to lose by looking out for and supporting the SFSA review where appropriate as this is not a single club .issue and needs tackled on a broader front.
It would be useful in terms of future discussions if Celtic supporters were more informed on what is happening in England which is covered at
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-sustainable-future-reforming-club-football-governance/a-sustainable-future-reforming-club-football-governance
Financial sustainability vie Regulation /Oversight.
Greater Fan involvement in Board decisions
Guarding against unfit persons taking over Celtic
All important to safe guard all supporters from the actions of the clubs they support.
I also remember Largs sea front with an ex which made me inadvertently propose
Got out of it but a great night😎
och aye Jock M’Kay tell me who is the girl that you’ll Marry
tisnae on the Tube But…
NJOi…
Is it Molly O’Hare,
From Madiscon Square, or a Bonny wee team frae Glenside/Garry.
CELTIC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ZKQfp7D6U
CELTIC
and …. many scientific paper which have been published are later found to be ‘wrong’ and there is a reproducibility crisis in ‘social sciences’ – the most challenging of sciences as it is very difficult to control variables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v778svukrtU&t=498s
I heart sabine that way. mon the hoops.
Scaniel 5.45
Damned impertinence. Ya rascal. 😂
Big Jimmy,
I huv nae idea about Horse racing.
For some mad reason I decided to do a bet, an Ayrton Senna on Storm Mahler and it came in, Yesterday.
It was the colours (the jockey wis wearing) that attracted me to it. 95 Back for Saed 10 spot.
Saed is gonnae really rock fior Celtic IMHO @ the highest level.
Oh and I have wasted all those winnings trying other types of horse racing wins.
Well I huv put a few fitba bets on. Not Lord Lucan good howeeeeevvvvvvvaaaaaaah.
Meeting BelmontBrian tomorrow at the Brazen, about 1.30. Any of you guys wanting to come down and join us you are very welcome. Unfortunately you have to listen to Brian’s jokes. 🙄
My best memory of Largs seafront was a hot summer day in 1988 when a female work colleague talked me into going away with her for the day and her driving us to Largs to enjoy the hot sunshine. It was a scorching Sunday and we had a nice lunch followed by a long walk.
Because of the weather, the town was jumping and we ended up in a pub where, as luck would have it, Ireland were playing England in Stuttgart in their opening group match in EURO 88.
Ireland took the lead and the pub erupted, with the exception of a few Gers fans who soon disappeared. The rest of the game and after the final whistle was one big party as England lost to an excellent Irish side.
Every time I think if Largs I remember that beautiful Sunday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk
Ye dinnae get a Green Monday.
Tom 7.23
A female work colleague talked me into going away with her….You are an absolute cad and bounder. How was your night in Largs? 😜
OH
Mega
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk
BRRB
Yes quite. Believe it or not, after agreeing to keep our away day a secret from the office, as we sat in traffic in the approach to Largs, I heard a voice to my left say — Awright Tom?
I looked round to see a guy from the office sitting in his car with his wife.
“You two out for a day in the sun?” he said.
“Aye,” said I. “Too good to sit in the house.”
“Aye me too,” he said before driving on as the lights changed.
We both just laughed.
You couldn’t script it eh?
Tom
Aye indeed. 👍