These “ultras” don’t seem to realise that the only way we will ever be anything approaching a big club is by attracting the fairweather fans. They exercise rational consumer choice by preferring to watch attractive teams playing decent football. It only takes a little success to bring fairweathers back. And when they do return, I’m convinced that fans of clubs like ours get infinitely more pleasure out of days like this than your Man United and Chelsea hordes ever will. They expect to pick up cups every season. At best, we hope to avoid relegation, maybe have a push at promotion, or a victory over local rivals. They can keep their Premierships and their Champions Leagues.
The Lions’ manes are hoary with age now but the adulation heaped upon the survivors of Celtic’s European Cup-winning team is as fervent as on the evening of May 25, 1967, in Lisbon, when Jock Stein’s players breached Inter Milan’s infamously negative catenaccio defence to become the first British side to bring the champions’ trophy home in triumph. True, these audiences no longer try to rip off their idols’ garments – several Celtic players returned to their dressing room in the Estadio Nacional shorn of jerseys, boots, socks and very nearly everything else – but their admirers’ desire to savour the proximity of heroes has intensified incredibly on the run-up to the 50th anniversary of that epochal victory.
