Things are different over there. Two examples:
1) Motherwell’s Phil O’Donnell, a former Celtic player, dropped dead on the field during a match in December. This Sunday, the remaining members of the 1991 Motherwell team (which won the Scottish Cup with a 19-year-old O’Donnell) and the 1998 Celtic team (which O’Donnell led to the regular season SPL title) will play an exhibition at Celtic Park to raise money for O’Donnell’s family. It’s expected to be a hard sellout.
2) Tommy Burns, a former Celtic player who ran the player-development program, died last week only 51 years old. For those unable to attend the funeral Mass, Celtic has put a PDF of the Order of Service up on their website for fans to download.
And of course, today, two months after most of the footballing world gave them up for dead, Celtic completed the race back to the top, knocking off Dundee United with a Venegoor of Hesselink goal in the 72nd minute, while Rangers fell 2-0 at Aberdeen. And just like that, Celtic wins the SPL title for the third straight year, their longest such streak since Jock Stein and the Lisbon Lions in the late 1960s.
All 90 minutes. All 38 games. If there’s one hallmark of the Gordon Strachan era, it’s this: until the last second has ticked off the clock, Celtic have a chance to win. Consequently, we’ll see you in Europe again next year.
If you can hear the crowd at Paradise all singing “Fields of Athenry” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and not get a chill up your spine, you should probably see a doctor and determine whether you are in fact dead. Sirius just paid for itself. =)