In his Christmas Day message last year, Uefa president, Michel Platini spoke in the firmest terms possible about many of the issues facing Scottish football right now.
He told us that 2011 was “one of those years where one feels the weight and magnitude of one’s responsibilities, but which equally serves to provide greater strength. Because, the just cause – however difficult it may be – is all the more obvious.”
This is a strong statement of intent. Platini fully understands the position of president is not ceremonial, it has weighty responsibilities. If he believes these specific words, “the just cause – however difficult it may be – is all the more obvious”, he must take an immediate active involvement to protect the game in Scotland.
M Platini goes on to say, “To be a president is not to have an organisation at one’s service, but to be at the service of an organisation, of a game, of football.”
Scottish FA president, Campbell Ogilvie, who has been inextricably linked to the on-going improper registration of Rangers players allegations his organisation declined to investigate, would do well to consider these words. He is in place to serve the game yet he has offered us no information on the subject.
Michel then added, “It has been a year which has underlined the importance of our organisation [Uefa] as one of the guarantors of the values, stability and equity of this sport.”
Uefa guarantee the values, stability and equity of football. They do not work towards equity, they ensure it is imposed, you have the president’s word.
“It has been a year in which certain of our national associations have had to take courageous decisions to preserve the justice and integrity of our sport.”
Here, Michel could be speaking about the SFA, who have to take courageous decisions to preserve justice and integrity in the face of gross charges of financial and regulatory doping on a scale not seen anywhere in Europe.
His most important comment, which reflected on 2011, was:
“A year in which we have also had to remain solid and defend our values – sometimes alone – to guarantee the respecting of the rules and the equity of the competitions, and to prevent football becoming a hostage of a few for their own profit and interests.”
“Respecting… the rules and the equity of the competitions”. This includes player registration rules.
More importantly, “to prevent football becoming a hostage of a few for their own profit and interests”.
This is where we are today. Football in Scotland has become a hostage of a few who will follow their own interests, not those values Michel Platini holds dear.
The president goes on to say that 2011“has been a year in which, unfortunately and at the expense of certain agonies, football has emphasised its need for transparency and governance, aspects which are so important in relation to the respect which is so dear to me.”
There may be other countries in Europe more deserving of M Platini’s intervention, but the crisis in Scotland is acute and urgent, and the SFA appear overwhelmed. We need the oversight only Uefa can provide and its president promised in his Christmas message.
For an extended synopsis of how we got to where we are, catch up on Saturday’s blog.
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Just catching up with earlier threads in the blog and have to admit that I am a wee bit concerned about Matt McGlone’s tweets re Celtic’s intentions towards newco.
I don’t understand the desire to saddle them with a penalty points handicap over the next three years. There are two main reasons why I would oppose this.
Firstly, as a liquidated newco, I think they are an innocent party with no need for penaltiy because they have already suffered that in losing their accumulated history. It is the flip-side to the argument we have been advancing all along which states that if they claim to be Rangers, they must pay their back taxes and debts but if they are a genuine new club, then they have no penalties because they have no history of misdemeanours. The 3 year exclusion from European qualification is not a punishment, merely a precaution, as you have to prove you are a stable club before you become eligible for that eventuality.
Secondly, I believe it is a false joke of a punishment. Since they cannot qualify for Europe in those 3 seasons, why burden them with an additional points penalty? It can only have a perverse effect.
If they are performing in Div. 3, they are likely to overcome this penalty level anyway and achieve promotion, with a core support giving them moneys far in excess of their rivals, if they have any nous at all. And, if they are in the SPL, it can only have the effect of risking their qualification for a top 6 place and the TV contract, which will be the reasons advanced to justify placing them back in the SPL.
Now, if you wanted to be vindictive, you would apply these penalties only after they have spent 3 (or more) years qualifying from Div.3 to get back to the SPL.
But,as I have always said, we need to emphasise the discontinuity. We need to ensure they know that the old Rangers are dead and buried. Placing them in a division outwith the SPL is one way of emphasising this. NOT punishing newco with a points penalty is the other way to emphasise it.
Otherwise, the sleekit Rangers 2012 fan will argue “Why do we have a points penalty if you don’t accept that we are Rangers?”
We have to accept that leniency. They will have enough financial barriers to overcome in accumulating a ground, a team, and training infrastructure, so we do not have to blur the lines any further.
No to newco in the SPL
And No to points penalties for newco
Rangers Tax-Case@rangerstaxcase
@TomEnglishSport If you want a lead on a good story, ask Campbell Ogilvie if he benefited from RFC/MIH EBT & how much he withdrew?
——————————–
This story is gonna explode folks!!
Good on you Paddy Gallagher
!!Bada Bing!! Kano 1000 on 12 March, 2012 at 21:14 said:
His direct frees arent great admittedly, but you see those deliveries you speak of.
I sat and watched his free kick for Samaras’ goal about 6 times on the bbc website this morning – it was THE perfect area for the ball to be landing at the perfect height.
I mean literally, 6 inches back or forward, higher or lower would have been poorer deliveries.
I watched the keeper and he cant come out because he cant judge when and where the balls going to dip.
The defence dont have time to get behind the ball because of trying to keep as high line as possible.
It was the perfect goal from the perfect delivery and genuinely world class.
p.s. im not known for being too easy with ma praise on hoops players too!
VP-You’re not wrong mate,Sunday’s game should be the first of a few parties coming soon.
Auldheid
I agree that it’s very important for non-Celtic people to start picking up the baton here, but they really, really, really need to lose the ‘OF’ nonsense from their lexicon. We are not to be tarred with the Rangers brush. We have done nothing wrong.
If RC Ogilvie had an EBT ….. did anyone NOT have one ?
Bada Bing
:)))) I really hope the net is closing, Get Ogilvie & it will all come tumbling down.
Im sure people on our side know a WHOLE lot more than they are showing so far.
Good night Timland off out tomorrow for day & night through in Edinburgh with good lady to see Mrs Browns Boys.( if i can tear myself away from that blog for 24hrs says she)
Ps well done to Paddy G HAIL HAIL
Paddy G
What a hat trick!
Great news my friend. Onwards and upwards.
HH
Mick 11- I wonder if a few ex-Managers might have benefited?mmmmmmmmmmm
Boys Rangers fans have been asked to attend local Rangers supporters clubs on Thursday for meeting.
Other Hun heard a rumour that season books void and they were to pay at gates lol, poor beggars.
Regan getting touchy
E. Harvie Ward @Mizunoman1
hats off to @alextomo for saying it as it is over Ogivie. Bit embarrassing for Scottish hacks and of course @StewartRegan
Stewart M. Regan @StewartRegan
@Mizunoman1 @alextomo I’ve missed the embarassment, can you fill me in?
Ocultar conversación
10:20 pm – 12 mar 12 vía Twitter for iPad · Detalles
I note Stewart has an ipad. Irrelevant but of interest to me.
Henr1k-I wonder which one Mingwall will be at selling his scarves and badges?
Hamiltontim……..LOL………right enough, they seemed easily duped for over 10 years
PaddyG,,,,,, Well done, me bhoyo…!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To me this tweet could even be from Campbells time at the sfa.If so,..this will go down like the hydrogen bomb.
Don’t know why Regan continues to post on twitter. Seriously, like his 80’s namesake, one often wonders if our Chief’s brain is missing
stevebhoy on 12 March, 2012 at 21:17 said:
Here is the article. No direct link but it carries the same message as TBBs.
Last week I asked for non-Rangers and Celtic fans in Scotland to give me their observations on the current Ibrox detox. Several hundred emails later, I surface to bring you the first of a series of blogs.
First of all, a big “thank you” for the hundreds of emails and tweets. It is clear that very few Scottish football fans are of the Ahmedinejad tendency – almost nobody wishes to see Rangers ‘wiped off the map’. But when it does come to proper and fitting punishment, a strong consensus exists, of which more later.
What comes through strongly is the belief that the Rangers debacle is a genuine opportunity to rebuild Scottish football on a more interesting and fairer model. Ramsey spoke for almost everyone when he wrote: “Most see this as the perfect opportunity to better the league and the game as a whole.” A chance to recreate genuine competition in the SPL and consider wider matters beyond the “the self-interest of not just the old firm but the entire SPL.”
The key observation though, is that the current focus on owner Craig Whyte and declaration of his not being “fit and proper” to run a football club is missing the point.
As non-Old Firm fans see it, the decade or more long practice at Rangers of allegedly paying players one amount for tax purposes but another larger amount to save around £45 million on tax via so-called employee benefit trusts began way before Whyte. Legal or illegal. A least one former director has publically confirmed this too.
Rosaleen said: “It all stemmed from before Whyte’s arrival, and yet nobody up here from the media is doing any serious investigating beyond him!”
Though that doesn’t square with recent significant revelations in both the Sun and Mail shedding light on Ranger’s alleged practice of paying stars one sum but telling the authorities they were paying another, to save millions in tax. We await judgement from a tax tribunal as to whether or not this practice was legal. That is actually happened is not apparently in dispute, it is the legality that is under question.
And here we get to a huge groundswell of opinion from aggrieved fans beyond the Glasgow cauldron (pace Partick Thistle) Because the rules clearly state that you have to tell the authorities full details of player contracts or they are ineligible. If Rangers did not do this – and it is still an “if” pending that tribunal – a decade of silverware, championships and glory is under possible forfeit. The stakes could not be higher. If that is the case, Tony writes:
“In effect Rangers have fielded many players over many years in all competitions who were ineligible to play. This is confirmed by former Rangers director Hugh Adam last week and is subject to a current commission of inquiry by the Scottish Premier League.”
And it was also confirmed by Mr Adam who told the Mail the practice had gone on for longer than a decade and predated the SPL.
What many fans cannot understand though, is how key individuals in the game were serving both as directors of Rangers FC and on the Scottish FA and SPL. The job of directors – beyond trotting along to Ibrox and sitting in the box in a suit – is to oversee proper governance of the football club.
Campbell Ogilvie, for instance, is current President of the SFA and was not only a director of Rangers during the period under investigation but also company secretary of the club. It was his job to know about contractual arrangements with players.
So far Mr Ogilvie has not stood aside from his current role whilst the SPL investigation is underway. How many such contracts were signed? How many did he see? Did he know about them at all? If he did, did he sanction them being signed off? If he didn’t – why wasn’t he doing his job? Is there not a conflict of interest in his current position?
We are currently putting these and other questions to Mr Ogilvie via the SFA, but as things stand we are told he is not doing any interviews but is ‘distancing himself from the current investigations’. When we asked if he has formally stood aside pending the outcome of the investigation, we were told he has not.
As one fan put it: “If it is held to be true that Rangers, in implementing an unlawful tax evasion scam on a huge scale, fielded ineligible payers whilst those responsible were serving as directors of the regulatory and licensing bodies, we can say with certainty that the game of football in Scotland has been corrupt for 15 years or so.”
One Clydebank supporter put it thus: “I am now reading that I’ve been ploughing my hard-earned cash into a league that has effectively been rigged in favour of one big side…but now I’m expected to just move on.”
This is the key area fans want some answers about and where – right or wrong – they feel they are being short-changed by what they see – time and time again – as an over cosy relationship between the Old Firm, the SFA and SPL, and the Glasgow media.
One oft-repeated refrain is: “The media in Glasgow keep telling us how much Scottish football needs Rangers – what they mean is how much they need Rangers, not Scottish football.”
Nobody likes a cheat in sport. And here it’s claimed we have one in the shape of the loudest, biggest club with what some see as a tawdry history of bigotry, violent fans and a frankly supremacist culture. So when the bully and the cheat gets his comeuppance, there will be some vitriol.
If anything though, I was surprised by the considered responses most made to Rangers’ implosion. But of course there’s real anger out there:
“We have been duped…for 15 years,” wrote one fan, “and we are now sinking the boot into the perpetrators of the deceit. They have had a few days of pain. We’ve suffered nearly two decades. To hell with them and all who support them or feel sorry for them. They are cheats, simple as that.”
Well, it is for the HMRC and the tribunal process to decide if Rangers FC was, in fact and law a criminal and cheating organisation in the period under examination. But we can say there’s already evidence starting to emerge in public to support that as yet unproven allegation.
With the clock ticking at Ibrox, fans across Scotland are not short of ideas about what should happen. But as I said, remarkably few want Rangers wiped from the face of the earth. They just want existing rules implemented – a near-revolutionary suggestion it would seem, given the current unfolding saga at the top of the Scottish game.
Coming up next; Crime and Punishment – What to do with Rangers Football Club; should they be found guilty; and is liquidation the only way out?
Follow @alextomo on Twitter.
Emday know whe Steve Backley the javelin thrower is in goals for Arsenal?
Right Bhoys when we making a documentary about this corrupt country and the favouritism shown to 1 team lol.
sparkleghirl, Just replied to Stuart Regan..
Stuart, regarding your embarassment question, read this; http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/the-sfas-fit-and-proper-test-self-certification-for-football-clubs-a-farce-part-1-craig-whyte/
Lubo.
Regan – the bit about ‘what embarrassment’ makes him sound like a 12 yr old who’s been caught out.
Surprised by some comments about young James F. I don’t pretend I am any better at spotting a player than anyone else (thought the KoK was a ‘lightweight’) but I think I can lay claim to being the first (or one of) to draw the attention of the blog to this exceptional player.
That James hasn’t been able to reproduce his earlier form is obviously true but then he does work under the serious handicap of being human. He’ll get his form back & class is permanent. Actually thought he was much improved at Dundee.
He does have some annoying habits, his version of The Boonie is more of a crucifix and only used when he’s in the huff!!!
Seriously, look about you and you’ll see plenty of players throughout Europe with apparently uncontrolable juvenile, immature tendancies and they’re vastly experienced internationalists.
James will overcome these little flaws as his education in football continues. He is in my opinion the most exciting player to come through our system since The Maestro. He will be a great!
Not only does he have a too rare talent but & this is where I think he is better than Aiden, a fantastic football brain absolutely in tune with the modern game.
Sadly he won’t be with us for ever I suspect but you’ll still be proud of him when he’s at the very top of the game!
Celtic_First on 12 March, 2012 at 21:20 said:
Another guy on KDS made that point. My response was cut the guy soime slack,. he’s English.
Forgive others their trespasses for they might still have something to say and we something to learn (from the Our Auldheid prayer ;) )
Lubo, just noticed that.
Is it my imagination or did the scotslawthoughts blog not have the writer’s name on before?
Paddy G
Great news on your job and house. I meant to ask before about you watching the games in the Soleil. I visited my brother in Jersey loads of times and watched many tic games, although never in the Soleil. I have drunk in there on many many occasions, but the pubs we watched the games in were the Earl Granville, The Eastern and Scruffy’s ( which I gather is no longer with us, so to speak).
Will maybe look out for you when I visit next.
!!Bada Bing!! Kano 1000 on 12 March, 2012 at 21:27 said:
LoL
MICK11 on 12 March, 2012 at 21:19 said:
Another kaboomb?
Evening Bhoys.
Thanks for the messages yesterday.
Moving on. Thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s game. We played well in second half and scored 3 cracking goals. Loving big Mulgrew, Sammi and Broonie. Good to see Seeeboo get a goal to. How much does Tony hate that. Will add that Dundee Utd are turning into a good side and being a man down probably should have scored 2 in second half from Lacny and Russell. Think they’ll do the Huns on Saturday again.
What a save from big FF at 0-0 and good to hear the support singing for him.
From the Dons trust it reads to me that they are happy to forgive the Huns for a wee bitty extra finance and fairer voting. Didn’t read a particular reference asking the board to make sure Huns get their due Camupence.
Interesting wee tweet from Etims earlier:-
@ETimsNet: Tom Bowers anyone? The murky world of bungs is about to rear its ugly head again with Sir Moonbeams & the Cardigan implicated #Celtic ….
followed by:-
@ETimsNet: …Think early millennium….EBTs….found out…back stabbing…every man for himself. Fasten your seatbelt as you ain’t seen nothing yet.
It’s gonna get tasty.
MWD
PS. Brilliant new Paddy G. Can you let me know the Euro Millions numbers for this week.
Auldheid, the Aberdeen fans aren’t English.
sparkleghirl,
It does, it’s on the homepage. Paul McConville.
Lubo
Yes, I hadn’t noticed it until tonight, that’s all.
Auld Neil Lennon Heid,
I agree, can’t blame an English journalist for blindly accepting the OF tag. Similarly, Aberdeen fans accept what they read in the rags.
I sent Alex Thomson a link to TBBs article. Can’t hurt!
Hail Hail!
Neveralone
James carries a huge weight of responsibility for one so young. As recently as Sunday, with only 25mins gone, SKY commentator Davie Provan comments that Celtic need to get Forrest involved more as he can change the game.
This season, he has performed very well imho, esp in the earlier part of the season. He has played a helluva lot of games and was key in the early games .
Big games to come this season;
Cup final
Semi Final (and final?)
Huns/St J = League clinchers?
I will bet you a £1 to a penny James is key in some, if not all of those games.
Auld Neil Lennon heid on 12 March, 2012 at 21:35 said:
MICK11 on 12 March, 2012 at 21:19 said:
Another kaboomb?
—————-
I think its heading that way Aulheid, I anticipate this whole saga to take a sharp turn down a very sinister avenue soon.
Well well a RC school that doesn’t teach sectarianism.
Whatever next
Hail Hail
Good Evening Infidels
wots with Stewart Regan and twitter, don’t think he gets it… its like me dancin to Lady Gaga
@StewartRegan
@Mizunoman1 @alextomo I’ve missed the embarassment, can you fill me in?
Ocultar conversación
Can you fill me in,In private?
Bit suss.
tractorbhoy on 12 March, 2012 at 21:34 said:
Please do mate – it would be my pleasure. Off out for a pint now because I have a great day.