Celtic's hammering in Dortmund is a joke that may wear off quickly

It speaks a lot for the inequalities of European club football that a team can go from winning 6-0 on Saturday to losing 7-1 on Wednesday, a state of affairs that now just seems 'normal'.

The biggest problem for Scottish football is that Celtic’s 7-1 defeat in Dortmund on Wednesday night couldn’t just be taken in splendid isolation. Celtic have been here before. Last season, they lost 6-0 to Atletico Madrid. Rangers have, too. Two years ago, they were beaten 7-1 at home by Liverpool and last season they lost a Champions League play-off 5-1 to PSV. 

And while others will laugh at the misfortune of either (or both) of these clubs when they have these Sideshow Bob in a yard covered in rakes moments, the implications for the rest of Scottish football aren’t exactly great, because Celtic are probably, though Aberdeen supporters may for now wish to disagree with this, the best that Scottish club football has got at the moment. 

In the league, they’ve won six league games out of six, have scored twenty goals, and have conceded none. In a slightly jarring sense, they won 6-0 last weekend. They even kicked off their Champions League group stage by rattling five goals past Slovan Bratislava, although they did concede one too, on this occasion. But kind of remarkably, they only lead the SPFL table on goal difference because Aberdeen have also won six out of six in the league and are level on points with them. 

As for Rangers, the signs haven’t been great. They’re third, having dropped five points from their first six games, a goalless draw at Hearts on the opening day of the season and a 3-0 swatting aside at Celtic Park last month. And they haven’t looked overwhelmingly convincing in their other matches either.

They did beat Ross County 6-0 at the end of August, but each of their three other wins have only been by the odd goal. They were knocked out of the Champions League play-offs by Dynamo Kyiv, like Celtic started their European group stage (albeit a level lower, in the Europa League) with a win, and then had a bad result this week, losing 4-1 at home to Lyon. 

It’s easy to start to point a finger of blame at money. Yes, the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) lives very much in the shadow of the Premier League in England, just as it does the other major European leagues. But what is the proposal to do anything about this? Is there any expectation that bigger European leagues will just throw money at them to level a playing field that they don’t want levelled? Because that seems somewhat naive, and out of sync with, well, human nature.

Alternatives have been discussed before. Leagues combining the biggest clubs from smaller countries with pooled television revenue or Rangers and Celtic joining the English league system. But neither of these seem likely to happen. The ‘Atlantic League’ proposal was just one of several that have sporadically popped up over the years, and while yes, there are examples of clubs playing in other countries or combined leagues, it’s never been on the scale that this would be. 

England doesn’t seem like a realistic bolt-hole. The likelihood of the Premier League accepting Rangers and/or Celtic is next to zero. Premier League clubs would never vote to give up two places at the top table for no particular reason other than the clubs’ benefit. Starting lower down the pyramid seems doesn’t seem much more likely, considering the extent to which they’d likely just steamroller their way towards the Premier League or at least the Championship. And none of that is taking into account the, well, baggage that these two clubs carry. 

And none of this is about anything beyond improving or growing Celtic and Rangers. Losing these two clubs would have a deleterious effect on Scottish football, its television contracts and commercial revenues being decimated in value by their departure. What might be ‘good’ for Celtic and Rangers would almost certain be bad for the development of the game in that country because, while it is understandable that the supporters of all other Scottish clubs might want rid of them in order to bring about a little more variety in title races, the loss of the money that they generate would ripple right the way through the game in Scotland, impacting upon such issues as youth development, community projects and the other good stuff that football clubs should be doing. 

For Celtic and Rangers, this all sucks. Both have European trophies in the cabinet. Celtic’s greatest day came in the European Cup, and while that was now well over half a century ago, it’s become the pivotal point of the legend of the club. That’s the level that expectations are at, and getting pistol-whipped by the second or third best team in Germany is ultimately a reminder of how great that divide has become. 

There are always victims of this sort of agglomeration of capital. The way in which the gap widened tied club financial health to being in the Champions League, and to domestic success in the leagues that were worth the most money to broadcasters. The Premier League rebirthed itself at the best possible time for itself, just as UEFA were turning the European Cup into the Champions League. 

And the SPL was never going to match that level of interest. Rangers and Celtic are huge clubs with global support, but that wasn’t ever going to be enough to maintain a senior position in this new world order of big leagues and big money. And with these two clubs also swallowing up most of the commercial and TV revenue that did come in, increases in the value of television contracts didn’t turn out to be to the benefit of anyone, really.

This season marks the 40th anniversary of the last time that a club that wasn’t Celtic or Rangers–Aberdeen, in 1985–became the Champions of Scotland. Perhaps what Scottish football needs right now more than anything else is a sustained title chase from Aberdeen. Others have tried over the years and one or two have even come close. While Rangers were absent following their financial embarrassment Motherwell and Aberdeen both finished second. Hearts also finished in the same position in 2005, but the financial cost of getting that far almost killed the club altogether. 

The fans can’t do any more. Scotland already has the highest per capita match-going attendance rate in Europe. And it can’t be said that this isn’t happening elsewhere. This exact story has been repeated all over Europe’s secondary leagues for years, with the emergence of a tiny number of small clubs destroying domestic competitions without making much impact on the continental circuit. And it really does remain difficult to believe that even pooling their resources into one league would benefit them. The non-biggest-clubs market on TV remains smaller than many people seem to realise. 

The fact of the matter is that, while geographically pretty big, Scotland is in population terms pretty small, with a population of around 5.5m compared to the 9m who live in London alone. The wild west capitalism of the 21st century isn’t designed for the little guys, with it also baked into the model that the number of big guys steadily diminishes over time. Surrounded by Catch-22 situations, there are no easily solutions to an issue which has been growing for years, with too little action having been taken.