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FIFA: Classic: Celtic-Rangers

/noticias.info/ There are many great derbies in world football, but few succeed in ticking all the boxes as emphatically as Glasgow's 'Old Firm'.

The passionate and mutual dislike between the city's great rivals is legendary, of course, and so too is the historical reason for their enmity, although both Celtic and Rangers are currently fighting a fierce and generally united battle to shed what sectarian, tribalistic baggage still clings to their respective clubs.

There are other factors that have made this fixture so consistently enthralling. The fact the teams have generally been so domestically dominant and evenly matched, for example. Rangers might have the slight edge in Old Firm matches, with 147 wins to Celtic's 133, but between them these clubs can lay claim to a staggering 91 League championships and 63 Scottish Cups and have always been able to spring a derby upset even when at their lowest ebb.

The fact that both teams are contained within the one city also cannot be overlooked. Barcelona-Real Madrid might be known as 'El Derbi' in Spain, but the ordeal of facing taunting work colleagues on a Monday morning adds a unique spice to same-city rivalries - and Glasgow is your archetypal football city.

Hampden Park still holds the European record for the largest crowd at a club match, in fact - 146,433 for Celtic's Scottish Cup final win over Aberdeen in 1938 - and Celtic Park and Rangers' Ibrox are guaranteed crowds of 60,000 and 50,000 respectively, even for matches against less glamorous opponents such as Falkirk and Dunfermline Athletic.

First blood to Celtic
The Old Firm derby itself has been the source of controversy for well over a century. The sides first met on 28 May 1888, in Celtic's first-ever match no less, and when this new upstart proceeded to inflict a 5-2 defeat on a club 16 years its senior, one of the great football rivalries was born.

So large did the crowds swell for these matches in the years which followed, and so lucrative did they become for the increasingly-dominant duo, that a popular periodical at the time, the Scottish Referee, made a sneering reference in April 1904 to the profiteering of 'The Old Firm of Rangers, Celtic Ltd'. Needless to say, the term stuck.

Now, over 118 years on from that first-ever meeting, debate over the Glasgow clubs and their derby rages as strongly as ever.

Some in Scotland consider Celtic and Rangers to exacerbate and a provide a focus for sectarianism and division between the country's Catholics and Protestants, while others, among them the legendary Celtic boss Jock Stein - himself a Protestant - have always taken the view that the Old Firm derby acts as a 'safety valve', a 90-minute release of tensions that might otherwise spill over elsewhere.

Knowing a little of the history of these clubs is helpful in understanding them. When Celtic Football Club was founded in November 1887 by Brother Walfrid, an Irish monk, it was for the purposes of funding the charitable Poor Children's Dinner Table, aimed at alleviating poverty among the city's large Irish immigrant community.

Rangers, on the other hand, were the team of the Scottish establishment and the country's Protestant majority and, until a famous 1989 watershed, followed an infamous policy of refusing to sign Catholics.

Tragedy on the terraces
Celtic took great delight in the fact that their own recruitment policy had never been exclusory, with the ever-pragmatic Stein famously illustrating the folly of their rivals' policy by remarking that, faced with a Catholic and Protestant of equal ability, he would sign the latter first, knowing the former would never find employment at Ibrox.

Rangers, under pressure from FIFA and the media, did make a public statement in 1976 that they would sign a Catholic "as soon as one good enough came along", but it was 13 years before Graeme Souness ended the policy in headline-grabbing style by snatching Maurice Johnston from under the noses of his former club, an event which led to some Rangers fans burning their scarves and season tickets outside Ibrox in protest.

Certainly, for all the spectacle's undeniable drama, much about the Old Firm derby is unpalatable and, like every great drama, it has had its tragedies. Only last week, Celtic marked the 75th anniversary of the death of John Thomson, a brilliant young goalkeeper who dived bravely at the feet of Rangers' Sam English during Old Firm battle and paid the ultimate price in a terrible and wholly accidental collision.

Then there was the devastating 1971 Ne'erday (New Year's Day) game at Ibrox. Events were set in motion when the Rangers fans began heading en masse for the exits after an 88th-minute goal looked to have handed Celtic victory, but when Colin Stein struck an immediate equaliser, many attempted to return, creating havoc on one stairway and, in the avalanche of bodies that followed, 66 people were killed.

Old Firm, new era
The Glasgow derby may remain rooted in tradition, but while violence can still flare on the city's streets in the aftermath of these matches, they are not the simmering cauldrons of hatred they once were.

Part of this can be attributed to the clubs' increasingly cosmopolitan playing staff, part to the frequency with which they meet - up to six times each season - and also having an impact is the current hard line taken on bigotry by the respective clubs in conjunction with the devolved Scottish government.

True, UEFA just recently censured Rangers for its fans' 'discriminatory chants' against Catholics, and a section of Celtic's support still chant IRA songs, but it said much that no-one so much as batted an eyelid when Rangers unveiled their first-ever Catholic manager, Paul Le Guen, earlier this year.

Tomorrow's Old Firm derby will be the Frenchman's first since taking charge and he arrives at Celtic Park already under pressure, with his new-look team languishing four points behind the club's great rivals and in the same position they finished last season: third, behind Hearts.

Yet it is not Le Guen's admission that Celtic go into the match as favourites that has troubled many Rangers fans. Instead, it has been his attempts this week to compare the Old Firm rivalry to that between Lyon and St Etienne that has left the Ibrox faithful fearing that their manager is in for the rudest of awakenings.

Le Guen might have asked his midfielder, the former Marseille captain Brahim Hemdani, for advice. "There are some great football rivalries," the French-Algerian said this week, "but this one is unique."

Celtic, meanwhile, will have a number of derby debutants within their ranks, among them Thomas Gravesen, Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Jiri Jarosik, but the summer signing with most to prove will be Kenny Miller, who could become one of an exceptionally rare breed of players to experience this match in both the blue and green-and-white.

Yet, fittingly, it was left to a Glaswegian, Stephen McManus - Celtic's vice-captain and a boyhood fan of the club - to sum up the secret to thriving in this frenetic fixture. Asked what advice he would have for Miller and the Old Firm newcomers, McManus' response was immediate: "Get stuck in!" notas_de_prensa_archivo