Defending the indefensible
Por Antony
4 Comentários
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Part of me wants to disagree with reactionary comments coming from Celtic Football Club this week. Fans and players are united agreeing our exit from the Champions League, at the hands of dreadful Aalborg, is without parallel the club’s worst result in recent times. I’m clinging to the fact I grew up during an era when the idea of European football beyond October was fanciful (deep down reaching December is still a bit of a novelty to me). But honestly, the disgrace we’re currently feeling is as deserved as it is painful. And the saddest thing is it could all have been so easily avoided.


 

Celtic have done well in Europe over the last two years and any confidence we had going into this group with Manchester United, Villarreal and Aalborg had been earned. As well as this track record the Bhoys now have a squad with more potential than at any other time in my Celtic supporting life. In Scott Brown, Giorgious Samaras, Aiden McGeady and Marc Crosas Celtic have talented youngsters who can genuinely reach the top level. Shaun Maloney, Stephen McManus and Scott McDonald are decent players with lots of experience. And Artur Boruc and Shunsuke Nakamura provide the Hoops with genuine A-list talent who occasionally, on good days, drag the rest of the team towards excellence. But nothing’s ever perfect is it?
We started this European campaign with the best possible fixture with which to set a marker; Aalborg at Celtic Park. On the back of our best performance of the season when scintillating displays by Crosas, Samaras, Maloney and McDonald allowed Celtic to sweep past Motherwell in 45 awesome first-half minutes. And with a wonderful opportunity to build momentum, our puzzling manager Gordon Strachan made a decision which will mark his entire career as Celtic manager – he dropped Crosas. Having looked sensational we now looked slack. We failed to conquer the poor Danes at home and our Champions League campaign never recovered. Frustratingly it was a story we had all heard before. During our 2003/04 Champions League campaign Martin O’Neill inexplicably dropped our most inform player, Liam Miller, for a winnable away tie against Anderlecht. The rest as they say is history. Strachan, like O’Neill before him, would tinker towards his own tragedy.
Now every man makes mistakes. And I’ll preface my criticism of Gordon Strachan with some applause of his regime. During the age of the 4-5-1 Strachan keeps Celtic playing proper football, playing the Celtic way, playing 4-4-2. There aren’t many teams in Europe who’d go to Old Trafford with Nakamura and McGeady both in the side. We try and play football beautifully – even if it doesn’t always work – this positive intention should be acknowledged even celebrated. So credit to Strachan where it is due, but despite success he unfortunately and stubbornly invites so much criticism it’s beyond belief. And this negative side of his Celtic career is personified by the clown who conjured up Celtic’s most recent European collapse; Gary Caldwell.
Gary Caldwell is a bad footballer. Yet by some twist of fate he’s ended up playing for one the game’s greatest clubs. And I don’t know how. Usually when players leave smaller Scottish sides, in this case Hibs, to join Celtic or Rangers, the fans resent and hate the Glasgow clubs for pinching their best players. Caldwell’s move from the East end of Edinburgh to the East end of Glasgow was met by Hibees with a shrug of the shoulders and a puzzled look suggesting “what the hell do Celtic want with him?” If Celtic hadn’t signed Caldwell, his best case alternative career would’ve seen him remain at Hibs for a decade. More likely he would have slid down the ranks, bouncing from Hibs to Dundee United to St.Johnstone then down down down until he was a journeyman plying his trade with the painters and decorators of Scotland’s lower leagues. This could have been Caldwell’s fate; this should have been Caldwell’s fate.
Instead he ends up pulling on the Hoops of my beloved Glasgow Celtic. Like any Celtic signing, he was given my full backing but I was quickly unnerved by his eagerness to hunt down a media microphone at any given opportunity. Rather than keep his head down and concentrate on being a footballer, he seemed a bit too keen on reading his own thoughts in the newspaper. His performances on the pitch were okay, no reason just yet to earn my contempt, but then Lisbon happened. If Celtic have made losing in Europe an art form, then Gary Caldwell is Leonardo da Vinci. His farcical display against Benfica in November 2006 should have been the beginning of the end of his career in the Hoops. Never in football history has one man been so culpable for the outcome of a match – he showed the world that evening he was out of his depth. But he wasn’t dispatched like he should have been and what happened next has split opinion across all of Celticdom.
Caldwell has been blessed by the fact Celtic have a stubborn manager who will never admit when he’s wrong. Hitherto removing Caldwell from Celtic’s future would be to acknowledge an error. Strachan will not let this happen, so he tolerates Caldwell’s mediocrity and is fortunate enough to have able bodies elsewhere who carry this pretender. Are Celtic successful because Caldwell is in the team? Or is Caldwell successful because he’s playing next to 10 champions? I know the answer to both these questions.
The Celtic support, who were initially sceptical, have in the last 12 months warmed to the disproportioned defender. He’s even been granted the pet name “Heid” due to his giant cranium. En masse the fans now like him. But just because a majority thinks something doesn’t mean it’s right! The mantra of the short-sighted Celtic fan is now “Caldwell should be captain”, “Caldwell’s the best defender at the club”, “Caldwell could play as a sitting midfielder”. Football is all about opinions, and my opinion is that anyone who shares any of the above favourable statements about Gary Caldwell is an absolute unequivocal moron.
But with Caldwell’s, I mean Heid’s, newly elevated status within the Celtic community his crimes against Celtic, like Tuesday’s own-goal for Aalborg, will be overlooked and excuses made. One thread on a Celtic fans’ site asks “Caldwell - Unluckiest player in the team?” Then there’s a list of Caldwell’s many high profile mistakes which have each, in turn, made Celtic Football Club look shit. How in the world can someone look at Caldwell’s career and come to any conclusion which includes the word “unluckiest”? A player with no talent whatsoever is now a millionaire who plays for the biggest team in Scotland? Who now and again gets to run around on the same pitch as Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo? Unlucky? Really?
Celtic have good players, they are a well run club and have a promising future. But we are not going to sail beautifully through the oceans of European football until we cut the giant barnacle covered anchor of mediocrity that is Gary Caldwell from our ship. Fans of his will cling to the idea that his mistakes are few and far between. Firstly that’s not true; he makes small mistakes all the bloody time, every player does. But what makes Caldwell exceptional is his flair for the big mistakes. Statistically aeroplanes don’t crash very often – but when they do it tends to work out much worse than two London buses having a scrape against one another. To get lost in my analogy, Gary Caldwell has been responsible for more plane crashes than terrorists, bad weather and faulty engineering put together. And I for one am getting sick of it.
4  Comentários
28.11.2008 07:18
Long Live Celtic football club.. hail & victory for Scotland team!
Por  Davidmo
28.11.2008 10:49
Celtic was drawn in a difficult group,,and they didn't play really well,,maybe next season
Por  dank
30.11.2008 08:48
good to see you post again antony, although i am sorry it is about something that isnt celebratory from your end. from time to time, and i know you know this, a team needs to play to win, even if it means that they are scrapping for a result and not playing beautifully. caldwell isnt the greatest player, and i can understand your frustration, but i think the own goal the other night was just unlucky, yes unlucky! although, i think he might just be the celtic equivalent of ramon vega, and i remember how frustrated i used to get with him! ;-)
Por  CraigF
30.11.2008 09:47
antony, i am gutted that celtic are out.. and how does it happen? a gary caldwell own goal! geeeeez. sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh hey?!
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