Not only are Newco left without an auditor, a Nomad and therefore a market listing, outgoing auditors Deloitte, wrote to the club last month to explain they were resigning due to threatening and intimidating messages received by their staff from anonymous persons during 2013 and 2014 in relation to their work with the club.
The toxicity of that football club is difficult to overstate. Is it any wonder Celtic fans are clear: the ‘Old Firm’ died in 2012? Any attempts to rekindle it will result in contagion for our own club, who maybe smaller going forward without the ‘Old Firm’ dividend, but it will be healthier nonetheless.
I’ll take 40,000 crowds and winning the next 30 titles in a canter, bring it on.
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drambowiecelt
03:19 on 6 July, 2015
A bit quiet in here at this time of night without a bit a bit of a ding dong
Chill
Will waken up in 8 hours time and will ask myself was i really on cqn last night
P.J good wan….
H.H.
drambowie,
Point taken, apologies.
Kitalba
Naw I licked it off myself
Sure I did
Mick,
Very poor post, again.
mickbhoy1888
So you are boasting about being nasty…. it comes across as you don’t care who actually did it, somebody (most likely an innocent) is going to pay. Are you boasting that that was accepted and practiced police methods because it so… then you are evil.
Canman. you used to be good for a link or three…hit us wae AWB
H.H.
Canamalar
I had never heard of homoerocity till you mentioned it
But having googled it I have no doubt it’s another of tag you would have posted on yor profile to garner some interest
Mwahhhh darling
Mick@3.30 maybe you’ll ask yersel…should I go on CQN again.
Nae offence but you seem angry at something or someone.
H.H.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8EpfyCG2Y
And all of the above is the unfortunate cost of defeat, my friends.
Note that the gloating isn’t from the English, but from the renegade Scotch.
You live, you learn.
It’s a long game though,and we have all the time in the world.
A hallow victory, for now.
P.H.PearseCSC.
Laughing as the bold Kojo would say.
Laters. :)
HH.
Drambowiecelt @0339
Nae offence Drambo, but have you read this litany of tears of a thread? The Continuity Plastic Provos are out sniping.
LOL
Watch an Eric Cantonna documentary about this on Aljazerra a couple of weeks ago.
Article was not written by me.
Pinochet – the Cold War and the most pathetic match ever played
Pinochet, The Cold War, and the Most Pathetic Match Ever Played
May 29, 2012 by Vadim Furmanov
November 21, 1973. Estadio Nacional. Santiago. The match to determine the final participant of the 1974 FIFA World Cup is about to take place between Chile and the Soviet Union. The Chileans take the field and line up for the national anthem. They wave to the fans and kick off. But this is no ordinary World Cup qualifier. It is, rather, one of the most absurd sights ever seen on a football pitch. The reason? The Soviets are not there. Chile dribble the length of the field unopposed and roll the ball into an unguarded net, a strictly symbolic goal to ensure victory. The story behind this mockery of a match is yet another example of the inevitable intersection between sport and politics, a narrative of Cold War intrigues spilling over onto the pitch and producing what the legendary Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano deemed “the most pathetic match in the history of football.”
To qualify for the 1974 World Cup the winner of Group 3 in the CONMEBOL zone had to play the winner of Group 9 in UEFA zone for the final spot in the competition. Chile was placed in a group with Peru and Venezuela, but Venezuela withdrew before qualifying began. Peru and Chile finished level on both points and goal difference, and a play-off was scheduled to determine the winner of the group. In Europe, meanwhile, the Soviet Union recovered from an initial loss to France in Paris to win the remainder of their matches and clinch their spot in the play-off. Back in South America, the Chileans beat Peru 2-1 in the play-off held in Montevideo. The stage was set for Chile and the Soviet Union to battle it out for a ticket to West Germany. The first leg was to take place in Moscow on September 26; the return leg, in Santiago on November 21. After defeating a side from Porto Alegre 5-0 in a friendly, the Chileans were set to depart for Moscow on September 11. But history took an unexpected turn.
In 1970 Salvador Allende became the first democratically elected Marxist President in Latin America. His government immediately began to enforce socialist policies. Many of Chile’s industries including the copper mines and banks were nationalized, and a land reform program was implemented. Despite support from the workers and trade unions Allende faced huge opposition from the Army, industrialists, and Congress. To make things worse for the President, the existence of another Soviet ally in its own hemisphere did not sit well with the United States. The details of the events of September 11, 1973 remain murky. But what is known is that the Chilean military, with the tacit support of the CIA, overthrew Allende in a coup d’état led by the commander-in-chief of the army, Augusto Pinochet. As the bombs fell around him, Allende made a famous last speech inside of the under-siege presidential palace in which he defiantly refused to accept an offer of safe passage and vowed to stay in the country. Shortly afterward, he allegedly committed suicide with an AK-47 given to him by Fidel Castro.
The military Junta immediately dissolved congress and outlawed all political parties in the Popular Unity coalition that had been allied with Allende’s government. The economic reforms of Allende were reversed. Chile adopted neo-liberal policies that opened up the country to world markets. Pinochet, who emerged as the leader of the junta, initiated a campaign of brutal repression against all political opponents including communists and trade unionists. Thousands of people were either killed or simply disappeared. The National Stadium of Santiago was converted into a detention center. Locker rooms were made into prison cells, and the velodrome was used for interrogations. Torture was rampant. Gregorio Meno Barrales, a former socialist governor of the Puente Alto locality and a victim of the regime, said of his experiences in the stadium:
“Every day they let twenty, fifty people go… they called them by loudspeaker. They made them sign a document declaring that they ‘had not been poorly treated in the stadium’ (although some still had visible sings of torture and beatings). Everyone signed, it was the price you had to pay… we all hoped to hear our name in the ‘lists of freedom,’ [our sentiments] were logical and legitimate. We were guilty only of being defenders of the legitimate constitution.”
Guitarists allegedly had their fingers broken and were then forced to play their instruments. Army vehicles blasted the music of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones at full volume to drown out the cries of the detainees. It is estimated over 40,000 people spent time in the stadium; between September 11 and November 7 alone, 12,000 people were interned there.
An event of such magnitude inevitably affected the country’s football scene. The day of the coup the Chilean national team was supposed to have a meeting at the Juan Pinto Duràn training complex to finalize the details of the trip to Moscow. But the meeting never took place. Eduardo Herrera, the left back, played club football at Wanderers of Valparaíso and was staying at Hotel Carrera, some 100 meters from the facilities. He recalls:
“When we arrived at the field the coach, Luis Álamos, ordered us to return home. But I had to return to the hotel and on the way the soldiers stopped me about 10 times. I was spared getting arrested because I had a bag with the inscription “Chilean National Football Team.”
Victor Jara, the iconic singer and activist, was arrested, tortured, and executed shortly after the coup. The death of Pablo Neruda, though brought on by cancer rather than the regime, was made all the more traumatic due to the fact that Pinochet refused to allow a public burial. The funeral was a muted affair, but thousands of Chileans defied the authorities and crowded the streets in mourning.
Clearly Chileans had more to worry about than the fortunes of their national team in such a tense environment, but the first leg against the Soviets was fast approaching. Several players, including Carlos Caszely and Leonardo Velíz, were well-known socialist sympathizers and feared for the safety of their families while abroad. There were doubts as to whether the match could even be played, as the junta ordered that no one be allowed to leave the country. But it just so happened that Dr. Jacobo Helo, the physician of the national side, was also the personal doctor of General Gustavo Leigh, head of the Air Force and one of the leaders of the coup. Helo convinced the general that the national team could bolster the international standing and image of the regime. The junta relented and allowed the side to travel, but with a clearly worded warning: “If you talk, your families will suffer the consequences.”
Though the nature of the relationship of Chile and the USSR during the Allende presidency is a matter of historical debate, it is clear that Chile was closer to the Soviets than to the Americans. The coup changed that. As the Chileans arrived in Moscow, Washington officially recognized the junta as the legitimate government of Chile. Several days afterward the Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with Chile and recalled their ambassador. The climate could not have been more hostile. Two Chilean players were detained at the Sheremetyevo airport for hours for “discrepancies in their passport photos” in what was clearly a political statement.
On the 26th of September, the Lenin Stadium hosted the first leg of the World Cup qualifier. It was an unusually cold autumn in Russia; the temperature was recorded at 5 degrees below zero Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit). The Soviet Union dominated the match, but the Chileans held out for a 0-0 draw in large part due to the heroic performances of Alberto Quintano and Elìas Figueroa, the two center backs. However, the Chileans allegedly also benefited from some dubious refereeing. Hugo Gasc, the only Chilean journalist to make the trek to Moscow, later stated:
“Luckily the referee was a rabid anti-communist. Together with Francisco Fluxá, president of the delegation, we had convinced him that he could not let us lose in Moscow, and the truth is that his officiating helped us significantly.”
Everything was still up for grabs in the return leg. Despite the best efforts of the junta to keep a secret the use of the stadium as a prison, it was obvious that something was amiss and the rumors were widely reported by the international media. The Chilean football authorities proposed moving the match to Viña del Mar, but the junta insisted the match be played in Santiago to show the world that the capital was peaceful. Fluxá, the president of the federation, later revealed to a newspaper:
“the soldiers told us that we could say only that the National Stadium was ‘a transit center where people without documents were identified.’ To avoid problems, we proposed the Sausalito (the stadium in Viña del Mar) as an alternative. I spoke to General Leigh and he explained to me that ‘by orders from up high we cannot have it at the Sausalito, the match takes place in the National Stadium, or it does not take place at all.”
The Soviets and their allies in Europe and Africa launched a complaint. In a communique to FIFA, the Soviet Union announced:
“The football federation of the USSR has asked the international football federation to hold the match in a third country seeing as how in the stadium, stained with the blood of the patriots of the people of Chile, Soviet sportsmen cannot at this time perform on moral grounds.”
In response to these complaints FIFA sent a delegation to Santiago to examine the stadium. The delegation, headed by FIFA Vice President Abilio d’Almeida and General Secretary Helmuth Kaeser, arrived in Santiago on October 24. The military did everything possible to remove all evidence that the stadium was being used as a prison and torture center. Despite the fact that there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of detainees still in the stadium, they succeeded. In a press conference given alongside the Chilean Minister of Defense, Admiral Patricio Cardajal, the FIFA officials announced “the report that we will submit to our authorities will be a reflection of what we have seen: total calm.” Whether FIFA had been successfully duped by the Chileans, or whether they were aware of the situation and simply chose to ignore it, is a question lost in the annals of history. But what was important is that the world governing body had given the green light for the match to go ahead in Santiago; humanitarian considerations were clearly secondary.
The Soviet Union refused to travel to Santiago. The press reacted with outrage. In the weekly ‘Football-Hockey’ the journalist Lev Filatov wrote:
“The day that the FIFA committee arrived in Santiago, the stadium was still being used as a concentration camp. But the delegation received guarantees from the junta that the stadium would still be free, and that the junta guarantees that the match will be held in ‘normal circumstances.’ But until this day the stadium remains a concentration camp, and bloody terror still reigns in Chile.”
The Soviets also speculated about the possibility of a conspiracy engineered by then FIFA President, Englishman Stanley Rous. The newspaper ‘Soviet Sport’ pointed out that Rous himself succeeded in changing the venue of a World Cup qualifier between Northern Ireland and Bulgaria from Belfast to Sheffield at the height of The Troubles. So if Rous has no qualms about holding matches at neutral stadiums in times of political upheaval, the newspaper asked, what kept him from putting pressure on the Chileans in this case? Their response was that by insisting that the match be held at the National Stadium in Chile, Rous hoped that the socialist countries would boycott the tournament. This would allow Rous’s England, who had failed to qualify, a backdoor entry into the tournament. Such rhetoric was widespread in the media of the Soviet Union and that of their satellite states. Perhaps the most piercing condemnation of the decision came from the East Germans, who asked FIFA if they would consider holding a match at Dachau.
The standard account of the Soviet decision seems to be that they refused to play in Santiago on humanitarian grounds; the junta was using the stadium as a prison for dissidents of the regime, and thus the Soviet Union could not in good conscience allow its sportsmen to play there. While there may certainly be an element of authenticity to this narrative, like most events of the Cold War the truth is far more ambiguous and murky than the words of a government official or the article of a censored publication suggest. An interview with Evgeny Lovchev, a defender for Spartak Moscow and the Soviet national team at the time of the events in question, sheds some light on the political realities of the situation. According to Lovchev:
“our lack of desire to go up against the football players of the country that had been taken over by the dictator Pinochet was less a show of support for the opponents of the new regime and more simply the fact that the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Sports Committee feared the possibility of our defeat.”
Later in the interview, Lovchev reveals that the head coach of the side, Evgeny Goryanskiy refused to promise a victory in Santiago to the authorities, who thus refused to let the team travel to Chile. Lovchev believes that had the Soviets won the first leg in Moscow, they would have been allowed to play in Santiago. Instead, Lovchev holds the view that the party bureaucracy denied the players an opportunity to battle for a place in the competition. Fearful of a propaganda defeat to their latest Cold War adversary, the Soviet authorities opted to settle for the moral high ground and boycotted the match.
Whatever the true motives of the Soviets were,they had voluntarily given up their chance to perform at the 1974 World Cup finals. With the refusal of the Soviet Union to travel to Santiago, Chile all but qualified for the tournament. But the story does not end here. Inexplicably, on the date the 2nd leg was to take place, the Chilean players lined up in the stadium, as if there were an opponent to play.
“This game is beyond metaphor, its evil is real,” writes David Goldblatt in his Global History of Soccer. In the video above you can see for yourself the farce put on by General Pinochet and the junta. The stands are half-full, the fans unenthusiastic, the players almost embarrassed to be taking part in this travesty. Why the Chilean authorities chose to go through with the match, and why the 3-0 result usually used as the default when one team fails to show up was unused, is not known. Perhaps the match was meant as a propaganda victory, although how rolling the ball into an empty net with no opponent in sight constitutes a propaganda victory by any stretch of the imagination is anyone’s guess.
After the match, to placate the 18,000 fans that had bought their ticket for the match but had instead witnessed a farce, a friendly was organized against the legendary Brazilian club Santos. In what was supposed to be a celebration of their qualification to the World Cup, Chile was promptly humiliated 5-0 by the visitors. At the World Cup in West Germany, Chile’s performance was uninspiring. They lost to the hosts and could only manage draws against Australia and East Germany, crashing out after the first round.
Pinochet remained in power until 1990. The Soviet regime outlasted him by one year, collapsing in 1991. It is unlikely that we will ever discover the truth behind all of the decisions taken by the various actors in this little snippet of Cold War drama. But one thing we can learn from this episode: sport and politics, despite claims to the contrary, are forever and inextricably tied together. The same was true during the Cold War, and the same is true today.
Kitalba
Sure as Fek I wasn’t letting my mammy or my wife getting their hands dirty washing off some clowns grog
Evil as I was in the majority of the cases it was binned and the tax payers had another overcoat to pay for
However if I ever caught some clown pishing up your close he had a choice clean it up with his jaiket or get the jail
Every time they chose the jaiket option and kept their copy books clean and went onto become successful laeyers
Slan_Abhaile
Why is it so difficult to name your tours and regiments, I can ask the guys I know if they knew you. I’ve still got your name from our previous exchanges by e-mail so need to pass any private details.
Slan_Abhaile
that should read…
no need to resend any personal details, I’ve still got you in my address book.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=98AJUj-qxHI
Slan…sorry but theres no LOL about it .glad your home safe.
H.H
drambowiecelt
03:39 on 6 July, 2015
Mick@3.30 maybe you’ll ask yersel…should I go on CQN again.
Nae offence but you seem angry at something or someone.
H.H.
Not really matey ..,..source of amusement winding up the usual suspects
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You’ll never beat the Irish.
HH.
mickbhoy1888
That was some option you gave them…. and you are proud of that?
What Regiment did you serve in kitalba? Tours? Years? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Renegades.
Illuminate:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kPwbgUopGuI
Only God can judge.
WongasCSC.
VTTCFC.
Slan_Abhaile
I asked you first mate and I think the onus is on you because I think you are a lying bastard.
Ma Da is bigger than your Da. LOL
Renegade Scotch.
GuiltyConscienceCSC.
Slan_Abhaile
Just answer the question mate if you can.
kitalba
What Regiment did you serve in kitalba? Tours? Years? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Bought and sold for English gold.
Things are a lot more clear now.
God bless the ghetto Fenians, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin and Derry.
In wine the truth.
:D
HH.
Kitalba
I think most of them proudly say now that they don’t have a criminal record
Would you reconsider your opinion if it had been some wee bluenose pishing up against the chapel door
Clean it up with your jaiket son
Or Jail
Criminal record or summary justice and clean record
R E N E G A D E S
HH.
16
In wine, pished troosers.
Kitalba
Thanks for that piece on Chile v USSR
Fascinating.
HH
Slan_Abhaile:
You can’t answer can you mate?
You are trying hard to cloud it?
I wonder why.
you’ve changed since we last spoke when I met you in Brisbane I thought you were okay then you started to dig at me… big mistake.
16 roads great link.. em does it like no other brother…
P.S. scotch is a drink….:)
H.H.
What Regiment did you serve in kitalba? Tours? Years? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Kitalba, your silence is deafening pal.
You still owe me a tenner
Romantic pish ghettos
Most of the alleged ghettos I have visited in my time have 50” LCD tellys an Audi in the driveway and when you went looking for them they were either in Majorca or Benidorm oh then ten minutes later they would be phoning you on their mobile phones asking why you were chapping their door
Cause they had your mobile number on speed dial in case they needed something, after all that what they were paying you for eh