We all know Stan Collymore supports Celtic.
The former Liverpool striker has never hid his love for the Hoops and he is extremely vocal on social media about it.
Even in his latest column he freely admits his passion for the Parkhead club but he doesn’t just focus on that when addressing crowd problems accross British football.
Which is why his latest comments regarding the bottle throwing at Ibrox must be heeded to.
Collymore said, “At Ibrox on Sunday, from three different parts of the ground there were bottles thrown. I’m not going to sledge Rangers because I have a soft spot for Celtic, but this all falls into what I’ve been seeing since people went back to football matches following Covid.
“We saw it at Everton a few weeks ago, with coins being thrown, we’ve seen a Leicester fan handed a four-month youth custody term for assaulting Forest players at the City Ground, we had broken glass in Joe Hart’s penalty box and a bottle thrown at a member of Celtic’s management staff at the weekend.
“So I’m going to keep mentioning this until we have this one big incident and people say, ‘Why weren’t we warned?’ I’m going to point them in the direction of the things that have been happening over the last five or six months because they are not acceptable.
“So before the World Cup, FIFA, UEFA and the other continental bodies have to get round a table and get talking about supporter behaviour inside and outside of stadiums.
“Forget the fact Sunday was a battle of the Old Firm and that there’s an historical rivalry, because glass in the goalmouth and a staff member being hit on the head by a bottle is a consequence of football authorities coming out of Covid and not setting the rules back straight to football supporters and people involved in the game. We have to do better.”
To a certain extent I agree with Stan but are we really at a point where FIFA need to tell grown adults what is wrong about throwing bottles or singing sectarian songs?
Really?
Sadly, going by this blog here, it seems we do.
Where FIFA need to step in is with sanctions for clubs with fans that carry out these types of crimes. Because that is exactly what it is. A crime.
And until it is treated as such, it looks like we will need to just grin and bear it.
And who is going to guarantee the safety of Braga players, staff ad supporters when they visit Ibrox next week?!