Celtic Minded

The Ghost of Celtic Past or the Spirit of Celtic Future?

In his debut article for Keep The Faith, Smokie Bhoy asks whether or not corporate Celtic has lost its soul and whether or not some Celtic fans may be ‘falling out of love' with the Club, given its apparently soulless preoccupation with finances and balance sheets. This is a MUST READ FOR CELTIC FANS.

The Ghost of Celtic Past or the Spirit of Celtic Future?

By Smokie Bhoy

The festive season is rapidly approaching once more – with increasing and ubiquitous encouragement to spend, spend, spend. No doubt, shortly we will be subject to the recurring debates about the loss (or otherwise) of the true meaning of Christmas. For some, the corporate businessmen have hijacked Christmas, turning it (with our cash) into a soulless and hollow affair designed to maximise wealth for the few, while for others, there's the magic of seeing our loved ones' delight at unwrapping their lovingly bought gifts, and of spending precious time with close friends and family. What has this got to do with Celtic? Well, when we are debating the true meaning of Christmas this year, it is my belief that we should spare a moment to consider the true meaning of Celtic.

I meet many fans who are continually troubled by the lack of excitement – rather, lack of interest per se – they have for many of Celtic's matches nowadays. For the first time in our life many have been forced to concede that we may have fallen out of love with Celtic FC – well, at least with the 2004 version of Celtic FC.

Put simply, many have had enough of supporting a soulless financial institution rather than a football club, and are tired of being caught in the circular, self serving trap of discussing balance sheets, sponsorship deals, dividend schemes and share dealings. They are both troubled by and tired of attacking the PLC policy of frugal stewardship while simultaneously debating the legitimacy of charging £25 a ticket or releasing another new replica kit in order to fund the playing staff of our club; playing staff who take home tens of thousands of pounds every week. Yes, tens of thousands of YOUR pounds. Pounds that you have put into the club by purchasing everything ‘Celtic' from season tickets to lollipops, anything in fact that the PLC can think of to capture our emotional attachment in the currency of their emotional attachment – the pound!

On reflection, this is unsurprising and has been a gradual process initiated by the demise of the Jungle, and crucially, the simultaneous demise of the Celtic culture as many see it (or at least, as many liked to see it). It should be highlighted at this juncture that this is not a mythologizing for a lost nostalgia where we stood cheek by jowl in a run down shed. But it is a plea for us to question the path in which we have been taken, and the underlying assumptions associated with our travels since those times.

When we question the legitimacy of bringing out a new kit, or the cost of match tickets, or the cost of pizza slices, or the cost of having a photo taken next to the Scottish Cup, or the cost of paying for a new Henrik (not that this PLC board will ever have to actually deal with this one), we are met with the reply that ‘ we have to do this in order to afford top players - in order to compete domestically - in order to compete in Europe - in order to get more sponsorship and revenue – in order to buy better players – in order to compete domestically etc etc' . Sadly, there is no retort to this circular argument as in the present footballing (and hyper-consumerised capitalist dominant) world this is sadly all too true! If you play in Maggie and Tony's playground then you are duty bound to play by Maggie and Tony's rules, for to do otherwise, will lead to you having to find another playground to play in. And in our present environment, there are no playgrounds with alternative rules.

Well, for many disillusioned fans the time has come to look for other playgrounds or, preferably, to alter the rules of our playground; to make our playground one where its rules are compatible with the raison' d'etre for supporting Celtic; where ticket prices are not £25 and over, where corporate businessmen do not run our affairs for their own ends whilst patronising the real fans with claims of ‘emotional attachment', a playground where real fans are board members, where it is not necessary to ask fans for additional (and it is additional) contributions for a statue of our founder Brother Walfrid because the fans' club representatives (who the fans have had NO choice in electing) do not deem it a worthy enough project to fund with existing Celtic monies (but they do deem it worthy to use club funds to pay £750,000 to short-term employed corporate employees as a golden handshake – and if anyone from Celtic would like to enlighten us as to what he actually did to earn this amount, we'd be grateful). If this is the Celtic 2004 ethos, then something has been lost somewhere along the way!

It's painful to admit defeat, but this is what some are increasingly doing. They have had enough of treating Celtic as a financial rather than socio-cultural institution. They no longer feel that the reasons they followed Celtic are central to the ethos of the club (and perhaps to the ethos of a larger proportion of our support than in previous times). It has never been their intention to promote the corporate hijacking of our club and culture by subsidising the wholly inappropriate player salaries or the illegitimate control of it by a few rich businessmen, and they now refuse to participate.

One cannot but help see the striking similarities between the Celtic PLC board's recent comments and Prince Charles's latest gaffe. Charlie's went something like this – ‘ Why do people seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools. People think they can be x or y without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history .' Putting aside the obvious internal contradictions in this statement (which the future King lacks the ‘ability' – natural or otherwise - to see), he really means that YOU and I should not get ideas above our station, that WE should not believe that WE can be possibly educated to do IMPORTANT work, that some positions in life are simply not meant for US, but are for OTHERS. Let's return to the Celtic PLC board and their pronouncements that ‘ we (the board) are fans and no, you (real fans) cannot have a place on the board' . Are the positions of dear old Charlie and Quinn et al really that different?

Celtic was not founded nor sustained in order to make a few rich men richer. We are not a commodity with paying consumers as the PLC board (corporate businessmen involved for financial gain and NOTHING else contrary to some claims) would like to have us believe. We are a football club founded in highly specific social and historical contexts - contexts that have resonance and relevance to many of our present day supporters. These contexts have ensured that we, more than any other club in the world (as far as this writer is concerned), have an emotional attachment that cannot be bought or discarded in the way we buy or discard commodities! We did not choose to support Celtic! We cannot simply decide to purchase another club's product in the manner we choose to buy a packet of crisps or a particular brand of toilet roll.

You see, we cannot alter the fact that the first song our father sang to us was ‘The Celtic Song', that the first replica kit Santa brought us was ‘the hoops ', that the first time we scored the winning goal in the imaginary cup final in the school playground, we were ‘playing for Celtic ', that our first football match attended was a Celtic match, that our first cup final was shared by 2 uncles, 3 brothers, 2 best pals and Celtic , that Celtic were the main love rival we had to pretend not to love as much as our first real romantic love.

We are stuck with Celtic and if we choose to stop following them, then we will not, indeed cannot, follow any other team. We cannot choose another club who provide a better product or a more professional service. God only knows if this was the case, countless numbers among us would have been following the Man Uniteds and Arsenals of this world long ago! Without US, THERE IS NO PRODUCT!!! These points are crucial! By having an emotional attachment of real cultural and social significance for many thousands of people born and raised in Scotland (not to mention others throughout the world), the adoption of purely corporate practices – which by their very nature prohibit ‘emotionally attached' sentiments – flies in the face of much of what Celtic FC has stood for and runs counter to the majority of our fans' belief systems and values.

The elements that attracted many to Celtic in the first place are sadly lacking I fear from the present set-up. For example, has anyone from Celtic bothered to investigate the business practices of Nike prior to agreeing their recently announced sponsorship deal or is this unimportant given the money to be gained? Has Nike finally stopped using Asian (child) sweatshops where ‘workers' (in reality, slaves) are beaten and abused, and paid less than 50 pence per day – often working 12-14 hours? Have Nike and Celtic agreed on merchandise prices and will these reflect the usual Nike prices in the high street? Are we to expect rising prices in line with ‘Nike quality' in a similar manner to the increases in ticket prices to reflect the increased quality of players and seating?

And what about our roots? How many of the homeless population in Glasgow and surrounding areas have recently been invited to a free Celtic match? How much money does Celtic give to charitable institutions per annum? How does this compare to the sums given to corporate employees like Mr McLeod with his 750k golden handshake? What local community initiatives are Celtic involved in at present? Do the Celtic fans help decide who benefits from our club's wealth generation, which is after all, almost entirely based on THEIR purchases of everything from match tickets to babies' bibs? Do the Celtic fans help decide ANYTHING meaningful to do with the running of OUR club?

And what about the future vision of our club? What have the PLC businessmen got in mind for OUR club's future? Do they simply see us as a 5-10 year business project designed to make (them) as much money as possible despite the effects on the footballing environment? Do they even have a vision for Celtic FC other than the utopian dream of gaining access to the English Premiership? (Others have written eloquently on the lack of vision and investment by this PLC board and the detrimental effects on the team).

The dire consequences of the ‘market-led', ‘pure business' model being applied to football is all too obvious. We pay far more now, we continually subsidise average foreigners' extortionate salaries (when we could be building our youth structure), we purchase more merchandise (which increasingly loses its significance/relevance quicker), we passively watch a performance in which we used to be active and central participants, and to top it all, we have a less competitive league.

Only the other week, an academic report by 2 university professors highlighted just how depressingly predictable the English premiership has become since its introduction in 1992. According to the ‘Herfindahl Index' – a statistical analysis of inequalities and competitive imbalance, whose findings demonstrate what we have witnessed in our league since 1986 and the corporate policies of Rangers (which we have to a large extent based our practices on) – the rich clubs get richer and the poor get poorer ultimately leading to separate league competitions within the one league. Of course, Scotland does not enjoy the sponsorship revenue (television and others) that the English clubs enjoy, making it more difficult for them to make a mark in Europe and ultimately more difficult to make the big money the elite English clubs make. This is the main factor which separates Rangers massive debts (and our debts) and the small elite group in England who more often than not make profits.

I know that many of the problems we have with professional football are shared by most other (large) clubs, but this does not make it any better for us as Celtic supporters. It makes it worse because WE know better and we should have spoken up before now!

The Celtic Football Club we grew up supporting is too far removed from the 2004 version and I fear that these sentiments, although not universally shared, will resonate with a larger proportion of Celts than the PLC have envisaged up till now. What we can do about it remains to be seen, but we cannot continue to blindly dance to the tunes of the corporate PLC piper. The time has come to openly question and debate the whole set-up of Celtic FC (and by extension, other football clubs) and to challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions that we are a business in a market place, requiring an exclusively business-led marketplace culture. It does not have to be this way!

When you and your loved ones are tucking into the Christmas pudding this year spare a thought for the real meaning of Christmas. Just for a minute, try to separate the nonsense from what's important! And while you're at it – try to do the same with Celtic. What is important to you as a Celt?

Don't allow the meaning of Celtic to be lost amid the corporate jungle!

Smokie Bhoy

PS And for goodness sake Celtic, get Brother Walfrid's statue in place NOW and end this shame!