“This wasn’t football.”
Ian Wright is not a fan of one of football’s most famous rivalries. The former Arsenal striker had a short spell with Celtic at the end of his career, during the 1999/2000 season, when John Barnes’ was briefly manager.
Wright doesn’t have fond memories of his time in Glasgow, and particularly of Celtic’s rivalry with Rangers.
“This wasn’t football, listening to songs being sung from the start to the finish of the game saying ‘**** the Pope and the IRA’,” the former striker writes in his autobiography, A Life in Football, quoted in The Scotsman.
“Or you’re in your car and people start banging on the roof shouting ‘No retreat! No surrender!’ At first, I didn’t even know what they were talking about.
“There was a vile atmosphere, fuelled by hatred, especially at the Auld Firm derby [sic]. Fans love to talk about it like it’s this unbelievable thing! It’s not an unbelievable thing: it’s a nasty, tense, unsporting environment of super-intense religious bigotry that’s nothing to do with sport.”
Wright also claimed that he found the Scottish media to be biased towards Rangers.
“The press up there seemed to be very pro-Rangers, too, so journalists had so much fun ridiculing me and my so-called lack of form up there.”
Wright was 35-years-old when he joined Celtic and scored three goals in eight league games, a decent record for a player of that age at a time when the league was more competitive than it is currently.
Certainly, some of Rangers’ recent veteran signings haven’t found it easy in Scottish football.
Celtic fans had great fun with Joey Barton's first tweet since Rangers' crushing defeat https://t.co/6ks1xf4CU2
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) September 22, 2016
Catch up on the first episode of Football Friday Live…
