hacks 100 uefa

cheating Dutch and psychopathic German referee to blame for Gers' exit from Europe's most prestigious club competition

With the league race effectively over by last September, the UEFA Cup was a chance for the Scottish Laptop Loyal to salvage some pride for the post-Advocaat Huns. Rangers' penalty-kick win in Paris, against a PSG team that was so bad it couldn't score against Lorenzo and company in 180 minutes (sign their star midfield player immediately!), ensured qualification for the next round and a tie against Feyenoord. Two things became immediately apparent; the first was that because the game wasn't scheduled to be played until after Christmas this was almost a cause for striking a special medallion to present to the Ibrox players and management; the second was that anyone who thought that the Champions League was Europe's most prestigious club tournament must have been reading the wrong newspapers.

Better still, if results went the right way Rangers were due to play Leeds. A golden opportunity to dust off the old footage from the early 90s and to write screeds of 'Battle of Britain' copy. The entire Scottish nation's football pride was once more resting on how the Sons of William would get on against a side from the country which gave us the House of Orange. It was also a chance for The Cat in the Hat to lead two different teams to an exit from the same competition in the same season.

The first leg was unremarkable and uninspired stuff, marred at the start of the game by an outbreak of crowd trouble. The trouble was mainly blamed on Dutch supporters, but next day it emerged that of the 34 arrested only ten were from Holland. By a simple calculation that means the other 24 were Rangers supporters.

Or maybe they were English? Remember the trouble at Pittodrie which was caused by a combination of the so-called Chelsea Headhunters and, bizarrely, the Aberdeen Plod football undercover unit. A photograph even appeared in the Record to prove it and thereby exculpate the Huns. It showed a man in the middle of the Rangers supporters wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo 'Chelsea Headhunters'. Presumably the Record's crime reporters are on the lookout for men with masks and stripey sweaters carrying sacks marked 'swag' as well. It later came to light that the 'Chelsea Headhunter' was, in fact, a Glasgow Brainhunter.

As it turned out, not only were the 24 arrested at Ibrox the genuine article but, according to the Sun, one of them was also a convicted loyalist gunrunner, "alleged to have shouted sectarian remarks to a Dutch player and to have spat at a rival fan." You can't help but get the feeling that there's a front page splash there which somehow failed to materialise. Now, if the same thing were to happen at Parkhead... Never mind.

This gave the tabloids their chance to exonerate in advance any Rangers supporters who were intending to travel to Rotterdam of any blame whatsoever for the inevitable trouble which would happen. But enough of these unseemly issues. Let's get back to the return leg in Rotterdam.

Desperate for a Rangers victory, the hacks were gutted when, unsurprisingly, Feyenoord won. It was too much to bear and sparked an orgy of recrimination directed at shameless cheating by the Feyenoord club in general - and big Pierre in particular - together with evil, anti-Rangers refereeing by corrupt UEFA officials.

The refereeing in Rotterdam was "shambolic". That's right "shambolic", Keith Jackson feeling obliged to emphasise this twice to us in TWO separate articles in the Friday edition of the Daily Record. Keith went on to bemoan that a Claudio Canniggia goal was disallowed by a "suspect offside decision". So "suspect" was this decision, in fact, that it wasn't questioned by any other newspaper.

Forget about the two sublime free kicks he scored with, Pierre van Hooijdonk got the full broadside from the Retard, the Mason and the Screws. He was branded a "cheat" and a "diver" by contrast with those fleet-footed pillars of fair play De Boer, McCann, Caniggia, Latapy, Arveladze and Lovenkrands.

The latter is worthy of a special mention. Having rescued the game for the Huns at Ibrox with a spectacular lunge for the equalising penalty, his attempt to repeat the performance after ten minutes in the de Kuip met with howls of derision from the Dutch crowd and a look of embarrassed pity from the referee. The hacks here didn't quite see it like that, though. "I feared I was dying", said Lovencrap in an interview with Kenny MacDonald in the News of the Screws. "Ref turned a blind eye as Pete choked", ran the headline to Mark 'Scoop' Guidi's article in the Sunday Mason (March 3rd), which revealed that Lovencrap "feared he had swallowed his tongue as blunder ref Herbert Fandel left him choking on the ground in Rotterdam... German whistler Fandel instantly waved away penalty claims then incredibly refused to allow Lovenkrands any attention as he lay writhing on the ground." Scoop missed out the bit about Fandel twirling the curly ends of his black moustache before impaling a baby on the spike of his steel helmet, but we were beginning to get the picture anyway.

The German ref's atrocity was compounded soon after this attempted murder of a perfectly innocent Rangers player. Instead of awarding Feyenoord a free-kick 35 yards out which any competent defence/ goalkeeper would be able to deal with easily, the referee in fact awarded Feyenoord a goal - twice! (at least this was the impression given by the Retard). Neil McCann was sent off "after an unforgivable act of stupidity which let himself and his team-mates down badly". (Colin Duncan 01/03/02) You can practically picture the fuming reporter loosening his Rangers tie and pounding the keys of his laptop furiously. "Unforgivable"; that'll be Neil McCann's tab cancelled down the Lodge then. In fact this was almost as unforgivable as the mass defection of the Rangers midfield in the close season leaving Bammy to battle on alone.

It wasn't just the referee who was it either. "Feyenoord engaged in an outrageous dirty tricks campaign 24 hours before a ball was kicked in Thursday's controversial UEFA Cup clash with Rangers"- Keith Jackson (March 2nd). Yes, they seem to be losing the plot completely down at Anderston Quay as they revealed to us that the Dutch side secretly filmed Rangers' training session at the De Kuip stadium.

What vital piece of tactical information would the Feyenoord manager glean from this secret film? Probably that Stefan Klos enjoys a sly cigarette at his far post when faced with direct free-kicks and that Lorenzo Amoloser likes to walk around randomly blasting free-kicks of his own into the stands.

If the Celtic View, or anyone else of a Celtic persuasion, came away with pish like this they'd naturally be branded 'paranoid' wouldn't they? Maybe it's contagious?

Indeed this level of Paranoia doesn't seem to be restricted to Parkhead or even to players, fans and managers. Journalists of a certain persuasion seem to be succumbing to the paranoia bug all too readily. After such a staunch defence of its own kind regarding crowd violence in Aberdeen and Holland by the Daily Ranger, it only remains to consider what the same newspaper's reaction might have been if there had been a similar missile throwing incident at the recent Aberdeen v Celtic game at Pittodrie. Supposing the perpetrator was proved beyond doubt to be someone amongst the Celtic supporters wearing an Irish shirt. Do you think that the Celtic supporters would immediately be absolved of any blame and the whole episode put down to 'The Donegal Headhunters'? No, I thought not.

The worst thing about this whole affair is that both Rangers and Leeds lost which set up the battle of ... er... Holland?

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

FERGAL 'SHARKEY' O'SLASHER and Hackwatcher