Rear'view ‘
Phil Kay
It’s the football season and Parkhead is all green
I is my first ever second leg of a Champions League tie and I damn well want a result. A result is what I am after. I want to go to the game and see it and for there to be an outcome. Two halves and a scoreline an eventuality: that will be a victory. My teams are: Celtic Football Club FC and the them. the opposing side. are the award-winning Dutch team of players. Football Club Ajax (pronounced). Everything is a sea of green with little blue and brown bits floating in it as we walk up the Kenny Dalglish Avenue to enter Parkheed at the Jock Stein Stand-side side. I consider buying a pennant commemorating the game forever in rayon. but suddenly I can‘t recall the word ‘pennant'. so keep walking. There must be an inversely proportionate ratio between the level of swarmingly zealous ticket- buying ferocity and the amount of
interior decorations. People fucking
die for seats here. so it‘s bare concrete and brave and at times
and green handrails. It is all green everywhere. Anything that could be green is green. Even the pitch is green:
more
two shades of green. stripes of green exciting than the game
and slightly more green. like the laid— out hoops of the gods. drying.
Ajax played total football. Celtic played total shite. incomplete football. passing it to each other until it went into corners and went out. failing to run after a ball that was passed badly again. having no shots on their goal. Larsing about. I think Guppy is a nickname.
The most unusual feeling of the whole night was when I was aching. absolutely willing. for Celtic to score. I really wanted them to win so that these two men behind me would
John Fardell
Therr fans money a venue needs to spend on were true
stop shouting the horrendous. venomous. unfunny ‘fuck's and such at their own beloved players. It was right behind me into the back of my head. It wasn‘t conceming me and yet it was concerning me greatly. Then maybe my emotion is as vague towards the bhoys as these mhen. It doesn‘t reflect love of the team so much as an absolute hatred of them playing badly.
We had the worst green seats of all the world‘s stadii: up the top. second front row. which meant we had none of the legroom and all of the heartache. We had to keep chicken- heading it to frame the action in the widescreen. rectangularish shapes of the gap through the handrails. I loved the big kicks when the ball bends up in the air moving towards us and up to our height and gets infinitesimally. indistinguishably slightly larger for a moment and then softly peaks and falls down again and yet gently for a moment is still coming closer to us. mathematically. in some special non-Euclidean arc. even as it drops.
My favourite time is watching three men warm up like very happy elves doing extremely big skipping. Their fans were true and brave and at times more exciting than the game and certainly more pissed and yet able to do this fast clapping in time together combined with a shit-fast Mexican wave-type double arm raise and lower movement. They were kind enough to fight each other and continue for a bit as thousands of the fans of Celtic‘s football playing cheered and jeered them.
All the Celtic fans sat in ordered rows and had their violent outbursts. Indeed it was a weird evening of topsy side downs. Celtic lost and they won on aggregate. They played terrible and well enough to lose just enough. not too much. The fans hated the play and loved the result. The result won nil for Ajax. In the league of champions there are no losers only champions. At the end of the day the sun goes down.
THE CHANGING FACE OF OUR. CITIES
OLD URBAN LANDSCAPE ~
A l/eV‘MUl (rifeséed development which had become
a no- area far Ordutar peep/em.
XXX ESCORT AGENCY
'33: :l
s!
uni3-o
k...
128 THE LIST 6—20 Sept 2001
NEW URBAN LANDSCAPE ~ . A vermin Infested deyez’opment which lira; become a noago area for ordmmy peop/e
WVWEECRS
onERTrerG AGENCY
wmg ~ 3 3mm
John Fade"
ROISIN McCl OSKFY