Fitba Hell

I WAS more than a little embarrassed. Having made the usual festive visit to my girlfriend’s folks’ place in Ireland, I’d had to go to the lounge bar at Greenore Golf Club to watch Saturday’s Rangers game (wearing a 1976 League Cup final replica shirt to display my allegiances, having struggled to convince the proprietor of a local pub that I wasn’t an Ibrox regular the last time I tried to watch an Aberdeen-Rangers game in a neck of the woods known for a preponderance of IRA sympathisers).

A gruff local with an eyepatch and his drinking sidekick were taking a casual interest in the match. As the ball pinged back and forward, the two men tutted and muttered that there used to be a reasonable standard in Scotland. Both teams’ midfields lumped the ball aimlessly and the game failed to settle; the men made derisory but apt comments about the ball being treated like a “hot potato”.

It was dispiriting to hear. I’ll admit to having been carried away by Aberdeen’s rise to second place and accompanying hopes of Champions League qualification, and the inevitable comparisons with loftily placed teams of times past. But the dispassionate assessment by these two men was difficult to argue with: the game was poor.

There was, though, something to be happier about it the week leading up to the game. It’s always annoyed me when managers praise their supporters for their noisy backing, even if the songs they’ve been singing had been particularly nasty; Old Firm managers seem most susceptible to such blindspots.

So it was refreshing to see Aberdeen manager Jimmy Calderwood take to task – albeit subtly – that rump of fans at his club that sing about how apparently glorious the 1971 Ibrox disaster was (when 66 Rangers supporters died in a crush in 1971 after a last-minute equaliser in a game against Celtic).

This is what Calderwood said: "… I urge our fans to go about things the right way when Rangers come here on Saturday. We can beat them without the usual nonsense that surrounds games with Rangers. I want a very sporting victory without reference to stuff that might have happened years ago."

It’s lazy journalism to lump songs about the Ibrox disaster in with the sectarian songbooks of Celtic and Rangers, as the media often do. Religious intolerance has seeped through the fabric of both of the Old Firm for decades (by contrast can you imagine Stewarty Milne doing a Donald Findlay and glorying in the Ibrox disaster at a club function?) Those who reckon the Ibrox disaster was "magic" are a small, sorry bunch of numbskulls, and one that has become smaller in recent years (however much the tabloids might want to fan the flames of controversy). But it still gets an occasional airing, and it was admirable of Calderwood to make his comments when he could have just lapped up the praise his team was getting, and shied away from more difficult issues.

Calderwood was also making an obvious reference to songs about the Neil Simson tackle in 1988 that put Rangers’ Iain Durrant out of the game for a long spell. That song isn’t much cop either – it reduces Simpson, a tremendously skilful midfielder, into a cartoon thug (which, ironically, is the how Aberdeen fans feel he was portrayed in sections of the media for years afterwards). It’s not in the same league of offensiveness as the Ibrox disaster song, but, at best it’s tired and unimaginative.

Interestingly, it was the second time in a week that Calderwood had commented publicly on the content of the Aberdeen’s support’s backing. After the Hearts game, he praised the fans for their witty taunts about the home side’s predicaments ("You’re not Scottish anymore!" was one).

Calderwood did not impress me when he became manager in 2004, as he seemed to babble and have little substance. But, in his selective praise of his own club’s fans, he has shown an impressive independence of thought that few other managers would have dared.

ABERDEEN had just scored a late winner at Tynecastle and the away fans were tumbling over their seats in jubilation. I, on the other hand, was subdued.

For the second time in three weeks I’d done something I’d previously never tried before in my life: sat in the home end for an Aberdeen away match. At Celtic Park it had been easier to remain incognito, witnessing as I did an uneventful 1-0 defeat. This was more of a challenge: a tight match against a close rival with the perfect, last-ditch denouement.

But I and my fellow infiltrator did well. We tutted conspicuously at misplaced passes by Hearts’ Lithuanian duds, and got to our feet to applaud the arrival from the subs’ bench of local hero Paul Hartley. Our best performance, though, came with at the winning goal. As Steve Lovell scored, we slapped the seats in front of us and seethed "That’s terrible defending!", the merest curl of a smile at the edge of our lips.

Afterwards, though, the rosy afterglow of such a satisfying win was dimmer than usual. I felt like I’d enjoyed the goal about 10 per cent as much as I would have under normal circumstances. The enjoyment of a goal like that winner at Tynecastle isn’t all about witnessing it first-hand – it’s about losing yourself in euphoria, wherever you are. I’d have been better off listening to Radio Scotland in my living room, or even seeing “Lovell 87” flash up on Teletext.

TWO dozen pairs of eyes bored into my back: the Scripture Union wasn’t happy. They had invited a devout Christian to the school to speak about his faith. He also happened to be a professional footballer, and a fatuous query about his day job had, embarrassingly, shifted attention away from an earnest bible discussion.

I had never been to church in my life, but the Scripture Union knew I was a Pittodrie regular. They invited me along, perhaps hoping to secure another member by dangling in front of me the prospect of an audience with Brian Irvine.

This was a lunchtime at Oldmachar Academy, Bridge of Don, circa 1988. Irvine had been speaking for a few minutes in the drama studio when questions were invited from the floor. Cue a couple of measured questions about the New Testament.

Then Irvine nodded to me, and I asked my question. I drew inspiration not from the scriptures, but from the wonderfully inane footballers’ Q&A that was trotted out in Shoot! each week

“What would you do if you found a million pounds?” I quizzed.

Irvine looked back, a little perplexed by my trifling fanboy query in the midst of a rather more weighty debate. To his credit, he made a polite attempt to form an answer about some act of charity or other. Meanwhile, I sank in my seat as tuts and glares tumbled in my direction from everyone else in the room.

Brian Irvine’s decency that day sums up the man. He has always been upfront about his religion, but with the modesty, integrity and quiet commitment - compare the crazed warblings of Glenn Hoddle - that also summed him up as a player.

He was not particularly gifted, and on a bad day was outright clumsy. A centre-half by nature, the consistency of Alex McLeish and Willie Miller in his early days with Aberdeen in the mid-eighties meant his sporadic first-team appearances tended to be uncomfortable stints at right-back; many’s the time he was on the end of a bollocking from his more celebrated defensive counterparts.

But as age caught up with McLeish and Miller, Irvine seized his chance at centre-half. He played nine times for Scotland and became feared for his power in air both in defence and attack; in one prolific spell he scored six goals in nine matches.

It was in 1995 when Irvine came into his own. Aberdeen seemed doomed to relegation, until he returned from injury to almost single-handedly drag them to safety. A modest and unshowy man by nature, he was not a player given to badge-kissing platitudes. That’s why his wild, vein-popping joy after a crucial goal against Celtic is one of my finest footballing memories.

Years later, as Irvine approached his late thirties, Aberdeen made an approach to take him back to Pittodrie. Irvine admitted that returning to the club would be a dream come true, but he turned down the chance of a Premier League swansong; he’d already said he would sign for First Division Ross County, and he was a man of his word.

Brian Irvine lost his job as Elgin City manager this week, despite almost taking them to the Third Division play-offs on a minuscule budget last year. It seems a rushed and foolhardy decision by those in charge at Borough Briggs - they’ll struggle to find another man of his stature.

EIGHTEEN years and counting. I watched from Hampden’s old main stand as Ally McCoist scored a late winner in the 1988 Skol Cup final. Ever since I’ve been waiting to witness Aberdeen win in Glasgow, choosing the wrong games to go to: skirting adroitly around the rare wins, blundering straight into losses against Partick Thistle and Queen’s Park. There was no change on Saturday, but at least I had a novel experience to consider: sitting in the home end at Parkhead.

I’d messed up in my attempts to get into the Aberdeen section, forcing myself to loiter outside the ticket office before a chirpy Irishman sold me and my dad tickets. Inside, we took precautionary action by excising any suspicious Doric content in our conversation and sitting on our hands whenever Aberdeen made a foray across the half-way line.

But it was … well, quiet. There were no sectarian songs; there were no songs at all to be heard from where I was sitting. (Other than some game attempts by half a dozen tracksuited teens and a ripple of sound when Celtic got their goal). "Where’s your famous atmosphere?" sang the away end.

The reaction from the home fans, a couple of vein-popping eejits aside, was distinctly amiable. A lady behind me commended a neat passing movement from Aberdeen; a dad told his young son in measured tones about how the other team had once beaten Real Madrid; people around me glanced across to the boisterous away fans with more than a hint of admiration.

Last year I travelled from Queen Street to Bellgrove station with a throng of Celtic fans revelling, in song, about Norman Tebbit’s wife having had her legs blown off in the Brighton bombing. But on Saturday’s evidence, Celtic should have no worries about sanctions from UEFA like those imposed on Rangers last season. A song or two would have been nice, though.

OUR national radio station broadcast live commentary from the Queen’s Park v Brechin City Scottish Cup match last Tuesday evening, a game that attracted a mere 535 spectators. It was played days after it emerged that BBC Radio Scotland was scrapping its only programme dedicated to books, Cover Stories.

Radio Scotland has a public service remit, but the coverage of last Tuesday’s game was not catering for the honourable minority interests of Queen’s Park and Brechin City fans; it was an embarrassing sign of our national obsession.

THERE is proper meat inside my bridie. This is a surprise; on a Saturday afternoon I’m used to the factory-floor scrapings of the Scotch pie. OK, it’s lukewarm, but this is still relative luxury. Caterers at Dunfermline Athletic Football Club – you are to be congratulated.

You get used to the lowest common denominator when you go to watch football: cheerleaders going through the motions to mid-80s poodle rock; five-year-old boys missing their birthday message because the tannoy barely works; contracted security barely disguising their contempt for you. Given they way they are treated, it’s little wonder that football crowds are often mean-spirited and puerile.

There were 6,500 people at East End Park on Saturday, a figure that prompted an away-end chorus of “What a shitey home support.” But wait a minute – what else is going to pull so many people to a modest town in Fife? If an aspirant boy band or the Antiques Roadshow drew a few hundred people to Dunfermline, it would be a big event. But familiarity breeds contempt; Michael Aspel or a fake-tanned pop chancer might make the front page of the Dunfermline Press and West of Fife Advertiser; a Pars player will struggle to escape the back-page ghetto unless he lands in the sheriff court.

A crowd of 6,500 at East End Park is a long way from shitey: take away the sizeable Aberdeen support and that’s still thousands of people who troop loyally along year after year to follow a generally mediocre team. Someone behind the scenes has decided that these people deserve decent half-time fodder. One day they might even turn the ovens up a notch or two.

THERE was an acute sense of déjà vu last night: the red shirts would swarm toward the opposition goal; flailing legs would propel the ball back whence it came; the red shirts would regroup and surge forward again.

This unerring familiarity carried on into the second half: the fluid movement of the red shirts became agitated; the desperate punts upfield became more surefooted; and then, defying probability, the besieged team scored - and won. This was Celtic v Manchester United, but it might as well have been Scotland v France last month.

I once heard an American sports pundit decry 'soccer' because of its propensity for upsets. He missed the point. When an academic with too much time on his hands proved a few months ago that there were more shock results in football than in all other comparable sports, he was quantifying what millions of supporters of lesser teams already knew: a delicious potential for the unpredictable.

CELTIC player Shaun Maloney is thinking about moving to another team, probably in England. "The stench of greed is nauseating," wrote Daily Record columnist James Traynor in response this week.

Haud on a minute. Traynor and his ilk in the media constantly report speculation linking, say, a Scott Brown or Kevin Thomson with the Old Firm in such a way to suggest that moving to Glasgow would be entirely logical because it would mean going to a "bigger club". They collude in the bare-faced lies of players who say that money has nothing to do with it, a claim that, particularly given Rangers' current state, is looking increasingly flimsy.

George Orwell called it doublethink - when two apparently contradictory postions are repeated so often that people start to accept both without question.

"IS DAVID Beckham worthy of a knighthood?" asked a Radio 5 phone-in a few weeks ago. There was something bizarre about the ensuing debate that took me a while to work out. Then I realised: some thought him fitting of the Sir moniker; others did not – but only because of his footballing ability. Beckham isn’t fit to lace the boots of Sir Stanley or Sir Bobby, went the detractors. But all appeared united on one thing: as a man, he was entirely deserving of the honour.

Why does Beckham shuold be placed on the same lofty pedestal as Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren and Laurence Olivier? His supporters listed a few of his virtues: he seems to love his children; his forays into the land of moisturiser and sarongs have subverted the macho culture of football; he mouths a few platitudes about charity. In short, the Radio 5 listeners said, “he’s a good role model”.

Beckham is not the most reproachful human being on the planet. But my argument against his case for a knighthood – notwithstanding reservations about the merits of an honours system overseen by an unelected head of state in the first place – is simple. Beckham, as we saw at his wedding, is one of the world’s most conspicuous consumers. This debate comes at a time when even Tony Blair has said that the scientific evidence of global warming is "overwhelming" and its consequences would be "disastrous". If we don’t get our act together, in forty years, our offspring will look at the water lapping round their feet and say: “Sir David? They really did have their heads rammed in the sand.”

INSIDIOUS hypocrisy in tabloid journalism No 792: the Scottish Sun's front-page piece today with the headline The Bravest Man in Ibrox.

Let's recap: a man ran onto the pitch at Ibrox during a game of football last night between Rangers and Israeli team Maccabi Haifa last night, waving a Palestinian flag above his head. Aha, I hear you say, there's the 'bravery' The Sun is talking about - it was ill-advised to make such a gesture in front of the away team's fans given the historical and political tinderbox that is the state of Israel, no?

Alas, no. The man's apparent bravery, The Sun sez, was to be wearing a t-shirt bearing a photo of the Pope. Never mind the recent breakthroughs against sectarianism at Ibrox - UEFA's charges against the club last season and, finally, an unequivocal stance against bigotry from David Murray - and never mind that no one seemed compelled to run on the pitch and leather the bearer of the offending t-shirt. The Sun smells sh*t and it wants to stir.

Cue a classic Sun quote - one that isn't phrased how anyone actually speaks and whose utterer remains conspicuously anonymous (i.e it's what the reporter wants someone to say, but in the absence of anyone actually having said it, just make it up and - bingo! - you've stood up your story}. In this case, 'one fan' said last night: "He must be very brave. He was surrounded by nearly 50,000 Rangers fans and was wearing a top with a picture of the Pope on it. It is amazing he was not lynched by the crowd before he invaded the pitch."

So, the message of the story, should I need to spell it out, is that our t-shirt-wearing eejit exhibited bravery because, given the chance, each of those 50,000 Rangers fans would have joined a mob intent on summarily executing him. (Sorry, I can't find any other definition in my dictionary for the verb "to lynch"). Yet when I saw the courageous soul's death-defying dash on Reporting Scotland tonight, all he seemed to be dodging was a wave of indifference and a smattering of indignant oaths.

Try not to laugh the next time you read a sanctimonious leader in The Sun about the 'scourge of sectarianism'.

THE Lisbon Lions should be hidden from public view until the 40th anniversary of their European Cup win comes around next year. Because Celtic keep parading the eight remaining members of that exceptional team to the point where the lustre of their supreme achievement is being increasingly dulled.

The fuss around their appearance at last night's game against Benfica may have had some justification - the Stadium of Light being where Celtic snapped open Inter Milan's seemingly impregnable defence in May 1967 - but even Neil Lennon seemed a little bemused by the focus being taken off the current team's Champions' League efforts.

I've found it a little sad to see the Lions wheeled out time and again for trifling prize draws, like obscure soap stars opening village fetes. You suspect those who organise the Lions' repeated public appearances do so from a gimlet-eyed fixation with the international branding of Celtic plc, not genuine wonder that a team could win football's greatest club prize with a squad born entirely within a 30-mile radius.

PAY a man in the region £100,000 a week and his hunger to excel will be compromised, especially in performing tasks outwith his normal duties - such as turning out for the national side. No matter the platitudes about playing for the shirt trotted out by Terry, Ferdinand, Neville et al, they all know they'll still be millionaires whatever happens with England. Frank Lampard's uncharacteristically insipid performances this summer were a case in point. Ashley Cole's autobiographical whinging about stingy Arsenal - providers of some of the planet's highest wage packets outside the Microsoft boardroom - rammed home that point.

But let's put the filty luchre to one side: can the England players be blamed for failing to muster much enthusiasm when they look out to the stands and see who they're representing?

I spent a few days in Frankfurt this summer, in the company of tens of thousands of England fans. During this time I was dumbfounded to read the papers flown in from London, with their reports of the good-natured tomfoolery of the national team's supporters. These weren't people to be ashamed of anymore, we were proudly told - they were proletarian cultural ambassadors who'd turned the cross of St George into a symbol of international goodwill.

What I saw was a mass of confrontational boors. There were decent individuals among them, but the over-riding atmosphere was one of ugly oneupmanship, predicated on the reduction of English history into a series of military triumphs. Fans wore chainmail and Tommy hats; they revelled in songs about the RAF "from England" shooting down German bombers; they invoked the sectarian conflict of Northern Ireland with leering abuse of the Pope. It was a curdled, confused nationalism - and one that failed to rouse the idle millionaires on the pitch from their slumber.

Modern English football still has, for now, the crowds and the lucrative sponsorship. But Croatia sensed an emptiness underneath the glitz - and ripped away the facade.

I'VE never seen Aberdeen win in Glasgow. The first attempt was close: a 3-2 defeat to Rangers in the 1988 Skol Cup final (with - curses - a late winner from Ally McCoist). The Glasgow Garden Festival of that year is a hazily remembered footnote in the re-invention of Glasgow, a city that nearly two decades on, rather than quaintly chaging its image with herbaceous borders, is now brash enough to market itself as 'Scotland with style'. And still I've not seen Aberdeen win in Glasgow, in dozens of attempts. Including games against Partick Thistle.

So a few weeks ago I strode down to Firhill for a straightforward League Cup tie against Queen's Park, happy that I was finally to break my duck. Only to see the doughty collective of amateurs hold our abject mob to a 0-0 draw, then win on penalties.

I used to take defeat very badly. In 1984 I blubbed when Dundee United - a team I had no allegiance to other than they were representing Scotland - lost out to Manchester United in the UEFA Cup, then cursed as my mum watched Coronation Street (Ken Barlowe had the match on in the background, and and his indifference to the result was grinding insult into my injury). In 1989 I launched a sit-down protest as my callous parents attempted to coax me into playing an important tennis match mere minutes after Scotland's under-16s had succumbed to defeat in their World Cup final against Saudi Arabia ("But you don't understand," I railed, "They had beards! They're meant to be 15!). In 1996, the thought even crossed my mind that I would have to drop out of university after sitting behind the goal where Gary McAllister missed his penalty against England.

After the Queen's Park game, though, I was only numb. The defeat wasn't much fun, but it didn't linger for days afterwards. I'm 31 now, and, somehow, it didn't seem to matter as much, even if it was arguably Aberdeen's worst defeat in 103 years of history.

I will, one day, see Aberdeen win in Glasgow. It just won't matter as much as it would have done a few years ago.

A CELTIC fan was on the radio the other day, complaining about the abuse given to Neil Lennon. He claimed that Lennon got heckled by fans of every other Scottish teams by dint of being a Catholic from Northern Ireland.

Let's separate the truth from whining victimhood. Lennon does receive abuse for his religion, mainly from fans of a Rangers bent and a smattering of neanderthals in Ibrox mini-mes such as Tynecastle and New Broomfield. Everywhere else he's abused simply for being a petulant ginger git.

MY DAD got a surprise through the post the other day. It was a letter from Russell Anderson, whom he had coached for a few years in the early 1990s back in the days when Anderson was a scrawny right-winger rather than the doughty centre-half of today. The Aberdeen captain wanted to invite all his former coaches to his testimonial game against Everton next Tuesday. My dad, usually a master of gruffly downplaying rogue bursts of excitement, was fair chuffed.

It was a lovely touch of Anderson, a talented player who, having settled with his young family, has been happy to spend his entire career at the club rather than court the sporadic interest from wealthier employers elsewhere. Compare Ashley Cole, one of football's increasing rash of petulant nouveaux-riches. Cole's petted lip has been spitting insults in the direction of Arsène Wenger, the man who turned him into one of the most sought-after defenders in the world. Cole has the cars, the house and the pop-star wife, but he's getting all upset now because he wants to cash in on the Abramovich era at Chelsea while it lasts, and Arsenal are coming over all awkward.

The perpetually sullen Cole will earn more money, medals and caps in his career, but decades from now it's the likes of Anderson who will be remembered with affection. Cole will merely cause the shaking of heads as we look back to an era when football was in thrall to odious levels of greed.

IT'S hardly controversial to claim that Zinedine Zidane is the greatest player of his generation. His peerless excellence, however, is owed to more than skill alone. Yes, he glides through matches like no other, oblivious to the harum-scarum activity around. But it's something else that has truly marked him out at this World Cup.

FIFA's edict to referees to clamp down on foul play has gone badly wrong. Rather than encourage fair play, it has created a cheats' charter: players have realised that they can turn the pressure on referees to their advantage by recoiling in faux agony after any physical contact, as if picked off by a sniper in corporate hospitality. One by one football's greatest stars have demeaned their sport in this way: Ballack against Argentina, Figo against the Nerherlands, Henry against Spain. The nadir was in the Netherlands-Portugal game, when a naive referee was shamelessly exploited by both sides and set a new World Cup record for both yellow and red cards.

The only superstar player to have bucked the trend has been Zidane. On one typical occasion, when felled by an errant Brazilian tackle, there were no histrionics; Zidane merely got up and tutted in frustration that a promising move had been brought to a halt.

Class is an abused word when it comes to football. Zidane is one player who truly provides it.

ENGLANDITIS has spread north of the border. This is a virulent condition, whose sufferers are prone to highly contagious bouts of self-glorification and an abnormal obsession with young men's toes. Even The Herald's famously erudite and measured scribe, Graham Spiers, has succumbed. Sven-Goran Eriksson, wrote Spiers this week (even before hearing of Wayne Rooney's apparent miracle recovery), "is beginning to resemble the mysterious Scandinavian alchemist that many have supected him of being all along. Suddenly, Eriksson's England seem to have a genuine chance of winning the World Cup on July 9."

His evidence for this sudden belief that England will prevail? Other than a 6-0 win over a poor and unfocused Jamaica side, only the fact that Eriksson has been seen to "purr with delight about his team's preparation". And that's it.

Come hame Graham, ye're nae weel.

SOMETHING had been nagging at me for a while. My senses had been inundated for weeks with news on the state of a young man’s toe, the hand towels at England’s hotel, and whether Erkisson’s crinkly smiles at press conferences were a portent of good fortune. Then I suddenly realised: amid all this suffocating hype, I’d heard almost nothing about England’s opponents. Paraguay remain a band of shadowy unknowns. How many of their number can you name? Bayern Munich bit-part player Roque Santa Cruz? The Keith Moon of goalkeepers, Jose Luis Chilavert? (Doesn’t count – he’s not playing anymore).

England fans should hope that the media’s obsession with the achingly banal minutiae of their own team’s preparation is not matched by Eriksson and his troops. “Know your enemy” counselled the ancient Chinese warrior Sun Tzu. Bizarrely, for a country whose media and fans revel in their military past whenever an international football tournament comes around (“Achtung!” bellows the newspaper, “What’s it like to lose a war?” sing the fans), this maxim of warfare does not seem to apply.

Eriksson, England fans must hope, will be better prepared. If his attitude to opponents is closer to The Super Soaraway Sun than Sun Tzu, a nasty surprise may lie in wait come Saturday.

SWITCH to Talksport on your digital radio just now and you might just hear a sheepish-sounding Paula Radcliffe. Paula reads from a script and advises us to listen to Talksport and hear England win the World Cup. Her hesitancy is understandable – she’s not given to such hubris. She may be far and away the world’s best marathon runner, but before each race she is at pains to make respectful noises about the quality of her opponents.

Radcliffe is ill at ease with the braying triumphalism that England’s football team stirs up. It’s all around just now: Tony Christie crooning about “cruising the group games”; Jimmy Pursey rasping that “We’re gonna win the cup.” On ITV last night, World Cup Heaven and Hell was an excuse to chuck in gratuitous insults about the World Cup hosts. According to one gurning contributor, we’d all love to spit on a German. Last November, England fans warmed up for their trip to Germany by taunting supporters of another historical rival, Argentina, with refrains of “What’s it like to lose a war?” On Wednesday, they had little historical enmity to use as an excuse, but still decided to drown out the Hungarian national anthem with a chorus of boos.

Most English sportsmen and women aren’t laden down with this sort of baggage, so it doesn’t stick in my craw to see Paula Radcliffe, Andrew Flintoff or Tim Henman do well. Football, though, is different. Gordon Brown may find it politically expedient to jump on England’s World Cup bandwagon, but he should question the jingoism that fuels it. Brown’s platitudes about pan-UK togetherness imply that Scots support England’s opponents because of inveterate xenophobia. It’s precisely because I don't care for inveterate xenophobia that I’ll become an honorary Paraguayan on June 10.

NO SPORT offers greater freedom to its finest exponents than football. Basketball and ice hockey confine their players to small, restrictive playing areas; cricket and tennis always start with the same action; rugby forbids forward passes; American football is punctuated by constant stoppages.

But the flow and freedom of football is unmatched: referee’s handbooks are filled with obscure minutiae, but no arcane limits to what a player can do. Avoid handballs and heavy tackling, and – if you have the skill – anything is possible. Go wherever you want, use the ball however you want, score from wherever you want. Footballers can roam free and indulge their imagination like no practitioners of other sports.

This is why tonight’s European Cup final is exciting people far beyond Catalonia and North London. Ronaldinho and Thierry Henry are two of the finest footballers we’ve ever seen, and tonight they’ll both be working on football’s blank canvas.

THE forays of British teams into Europe aren't as thrilling as they once were. My addiction to football became complete in 1984 when, aged eight, I settled into the Paddock for my first European match at Pittodrie. Aberdeen were 2-0 down from the first leg against Ujpest Dosza, of Hungary. The match was unlike any I'd been to previously: the unfamiliar names and tanned complexions of the opponents lent a sense of exoticism, and the siege mentality they adopted made for a different type of game. Aberdeen pounded their opponents' goal, but the penalty was a morass of flailing, desperate limbs that looked nigh impassable. Only two minutes from full-time did Mark McGhee score a rapturous equaliser, before the win was secured in extra-time.

Matches against European opposition have since become more familiar and increasingly cerebral. The sense of mystery that once shrouded the continent's finest teams has been whisked away by the relentless coverage of the Champions League, and most matches between them are tactical to the point of baroque. While Arsenal's organisational nous and youthful zest in Europe this season have been engrossing, they've rarely thrilled. For white-knuckle drama and ventures into the unknown, you've had to turn to Middlesborough and their astonishing comebacks Basel and Steaua Bucharest. It's this contribution to old-style European football that ensures I'll be supporting Teeside's finest tonight.

THERE are only two occasions after which the word 'vile', with its quaint overtones of moral disgust, is used in a match report. One is when supporters are heard chanting racist abuse; the other when a footballer spits on an opponent.

Rudi Skacel stands accused of the second of these apparently comparable activities after appeaaring to spit towards Neil Lennon on Sunday. Afterwards, the columnists' frenzied condemnation of Skacel's apparent misdemeanour almost matched Lennon's own fury.

What a skewed sense of morality the football fraternity has. Dispensing phlegm onto an opponent is pretty reprehensible, but is it really worse than dangerously scything down an opponent? Spit can be wiped away, but a cynical tackle can end careers.

One of Lennon's team-mates is an expert in the latter. Is Skacel's alleged crime really worse than the brutal and calculated challenge that Roy Keane perpetuated on Alfe-Inge Haaland?

HIGH-PROFILE staff members are despatched at Hearts with the grim inevitability of teenage slayings in a slasher flick. No sooner do the Tynecastle faithful bask in the glory of their Champions League-bound team than Mr Romanov wields his indiscriminate axe. Andy Webster is the latest to feel the impact, and the fans' responses echo that which followed the departures of John Robertson, George Burley, Phil Anderton, George Foulkes and Graham Rix: instant widespread condemnation on the phone-ins, then, after a glance at the league table, a reining in of the criticism. They may cringe at Romanov's methods, but without his backing they'd not be enjoying this season's success.

The fans know deep down that it might not last, that Romanov's erratic and ruthless treatment of those on the wage bill might one day be applied to the club itself. You can't blame them for enjoying the moment - what Scottish fan outside the Old Firm doesn't hanker after even a glimpse at glory? But it's like staring into an abyss then comforting yourself with the pretty flowers on the cliff's edge.

IBROX never used to be much fun. As an Aberdeen fan, you would be exposed in the lower deck of the Broomloan Road end, bracing yourself for the splat of half-eaten pies and the splash of Bovril and urine cocktails. All around your little enclave, braying Bluenoses extolled the virtue of wading through Catholic blood. Then, just as you started to tut from the comfort of the moral high ground, some of your compadres would start to postulate that the 66 deaths in the 1971 Ibrox disaster was a memory to cherish. One day the obvious dawned on me: I derived little enjoyment from my trips to Ibrox, so why go?

Saturday was my first time at Ibrox in three years, and it was a changed place. After years of tacit acceptance, the powers that be have finally started scrutinising the Rangers songbook. The recent investigation into chants at the Villareal Champions League games may have found - subject to an appeal - that UEFA needn't do anything about the Billy Boys, but the international focus on Rangers seems to have made the Ibrox hordes think twice about the words that tumble out of their mouths. On Saturday, I heard only one muted rendition of the line "We're up to our knees in Fenian blood." What's more, the lack of negative energy to feed on appeared to affect the away end: I heard not one reference to the Ibrox disaster, albeit there were a few choruses of the mean-spirited song about Iain Durrant's injury at Pittodrie in 1988.

Oh, and we're in a new corner bit next to the Broomloan End now, with no upper tier hanging over us. So no pie-and-pee showers. And I witnessed Aberdeen avoid defeat at Ibrox for the first time in 14 years. Ibrox was fun. I might even go back.

NIKE has been peddling the myth of Samba Soccer once again. Where once the boys from Brazil juggled and pirouetted their way through an airport terminal, now we have grainy footage of a pre-pubescent Ronaldinho and his precocious skills, intercut with feints and dribbles performed by the world’s best player as he is now.

Ronaldinho, though, is the exception to the rule. Brazil hasn’t produced a team worthy of its reputation for devil-may-care brilliance since the peak of Zico, Socrates and Eder in 1982. In the run-up to every World Cup, pundits salivate about audacious skills honed on the Copacabana, but it’s a lazy stereotype. Even in their most recent World Cup victories, Brazil achieved success thanks to European-style restraint as much as the explosive skills of lore; Dunga, the prosaic midfielder who held together the 1994 team, is the defining Brazilian player of the last 20 years, not Romario or Ronaldo.

The romantic clichés are undermined further by ruthless cynicism. Rivaldo’s calculated – not to say embarrassingly incompetent – feigning of injury against Turkey in 2002 forever tarnished his reputation. But the gushing pundits find it hard to reconcile cheating and Samba Soccer. In 1994, Kevin Keegan was ITV’s guest pundit for the second-round match between the USA and Brazil. Leonardo, one of Brazil’s most vaunted players, was sent off for swinging an elbow at American midfielder Tab Ramos. Keegan had been hyping the Brazilians the whole game – they eventually ground out a 1-0 win – and spluttered at the injustice; he could not fathom that a Brazilian was capable of a red-card offence. He was made to look even more foolish when Ramos was diagnosed with a fractured cheekbone.

Television coverage of Brazil’s first match at this year’s World Cup, as ever, will be preceded by a montage of swashbuckling dribbles and banana-like free kicks. But it’s discipline and dirty tricks that are just as likely to land them the trophy.

THERE'S a curious breed of football fan at Pittodrie, usually found populating the Main Stand. They're defined by their pensionable age and utter joylessness; they thrive in failure. Each misplaced pass and ballooned shot is met by spluttered choruses of told-you-so disdain for the players' efforts. When Aberdeen score, they struggle to muster a limp clap and mutter that "They'll still throw it awa'." The most animated they get is in moments of real footballing ineptidude, when they lean back, then lurch forward and deliver a spittle-festooned "CRAP!" As Aberdeen completed a staggering comeback against Bayern Munich in 1983, their instant reaction was probably to complain about the noise that greeted John Hewitt's winner.

But then football fans in general are a peculiarly sour bunch. You only have to visit internet message boards to see more Main Stand moaners in the making. The tedium of the SPL in the last 10 years has been enough to make any non-Old Firm grind their teeth to stumps, so you'd have thought Hearts' attempts to split Celtic and Rangers would be meet by some enthusiasm across the land; not so. I'll stick to my own team's fans, but their reaction is not entirely untypical. Here's a selection of comments on the BBC website sent the way of Hearts fans today (some of whom, it has to be admitted, stir things up with their newly discovered brand of Old Firm-like triumphalism): "Dear god i really hope Hearts end up 3rd in the League"; "Typical arrogant jambo"; "Hearts are well known throughout the world...for being crap and losing".

The fans of most teams have to put up with years of failure interspersed with tantalising glimpses of glory. Decades of curdled hope can reduce even the most cheery of personalities into mean-spirited carping.

FOOTBALL'S attraction is its simplicity: two sets of posts; knock the ball into your opponents' posts more than they do; win. No arcane scoring system or restrictions on where you can shoot; a lack of complexity that has made for a beguiling sport. It's played by more people than any other because shoeless boys in shanty towns need only a tin can to practise their skills, yet it's capable of moments of transcendent beauty.

These facts seem lost on the producers of the stultifying 'magazine format' increasingly favoured in football highlights programmes. When I switched on Match of the Day 2 last night I had no desire to watch Lee Sharpe shambling around the Midlands, feigning interest in the relegation battles of Birmingham City and West Brom. The low-rent recognition of Celebrity Love Island wasn't such a bad idea after all, his disbelieving smile seemed to say. At least Sharpe has a soupçon of rogueish charm; not so Kevin Day, a comedian (so his CV says) whose half-baked monologues are so mind-numbing they have me clawing at my flesh.

English football doesn't need all this padding: it's a genuinely exciting league. Thierry Henry scored two sublime goals at the weekend. This was all I needed to witness, but afterwards I had to put up with Garth Crooks's supercilious fizzog; a lurch in tone that explains better than any dictionary the meaning of bathos.

You'd think we might have learned in Scotland not to make the same mistake. Alas, no: the producers of Scotsport SPL not only aspire to Match of the Day 2's format, they want to surpass it for brainless japery and a dearth of actual football. I've tried to defend Scotsport SPL in the past, as I suspect the regular pannings dealt out to the programme are as much to do with the Scottish cringe as actual ineptitude, an affliction that that also affects homegrown soap River City. But there's no excuse for making a 10-year-old Livingston fan sit through piss-poor banter to see a minute's worth of badly edited action of their team as the clock ticks past midnight.

Match of the Day 2 and Scotsport SPL could earn some belated respect simply by showing more football. Just don't hold your breath - as with any vanity project, those responsible will be loath to admit the error of their ways.

JIMMY Johnstone was a footballing genius revered for his mesmeric skills; Brian Mitchell was a workaday full back whose career petered out in the English lower leagues. You’d be right to wonder, then, why the former’s death sparked my memories of the latter.

Mitchell played sporadically for Aberdeen in the mid-1980s. He was a traditional full back far removed from the flying wingbacks of the modern game. A willing if not particularly gifted player with a physical solidity verging on a paunch, he filled in whenever the more established defenders of that great Aberdeen team were otherwise indisposed.

Johnstone’s fame endured beyond his playing days. Obituaries told that he revelled in the continuing adulation he received from fans, eager for his tales of skirmishes with thuggish full-backs and oar-less boats. That made me think of another footballer’s reaction to fanboy attention.

Mitchell’s retirement saw him retreat back into anonymity. On a night out with a fellow Aberdeen fan a few years back, I spotted a vaguely familiar figure queuing to get into a nightspot on less-than-salubrious Justice Mill Lane. We squinted, then simultaneously blurted out: "That’s Brian Mitchell!" Mitchell’s sheepish smile suggested his modest fame hadn’t been outed in a while. He turned to a friend and thumbed in our direction, as if to say, "Can you believe someone recognised me?"

Johnstone was exalted for his awesome skill, but also because he was a link back to the heady youth of many a Celtic and Scotland fan. Brian Mitchell may not have had the same talents, but he’s still a bridge back to thousands of happy childhoods. He’ll get occasional, dewy-eyed Aberdeen fans pestering him for years to come.

THE abuse dished out to porky galactico Ronaldo continues an alarming trend. Aston Villa wanted to prosecute David Ginola a few years back when he appeared at training with a sneak preview of his middle-age spread, while Belgian club Standard Liege gained international fame after threatening to fine players £332 for each excess kilo they carried. Unless a campaign is started soon, body fascists will succeed in culling the fat footballer entirely.

The game would have been deprived of some of its most memorable exponents if such draconian measures had prevailed a century ago. Legendary Sheffield United, Chelsea and Bradford City goalkeeper William 'Fatty' Foulke reputedly weighed 25 stones by 1907, yet still managed to play for England once and establish himself as a master of penalty saves. No wonder, since, playing when keepers didn’t have to stay on their line, he charged jittery spot-kick takers with every intention of trampling them underfoot. Fatty was also notorious for meting out his own violent justice to any fan who suggested he’d had a pork pie too many.

Everton and Wales goalkeeper Neville Southall preferred a less confrontational approach when rival supporters drew attention to the inexorable expansion of his waistline in the 1980s: he would munch on the pies that rained into his six-yard box. And Cowdenbeath manager Mixu Paatelainen is another who didn’t take the terrace taunts to heart, as I witnessed for myself. While warming up at Pittodrie during his Dundee United days, he responded to suggestions that he excelled at a form of Japanese hand-to-hand combat by slapping his thighs, puffing his cheeks out and lumbering past a bemused Merkland End, face contorted in mock anticipation of a showdown with a 30-stone nappy-wearer.

But the best fat footballer story dates back to 1953 and England’s first home defeat against a non-UK team. Prior to their 6-3 drubbing, one England star took a look at chunky Hungarian Ferenc Puskas and uttered the immortal words: "Look at that fat little chap. We’ll murder this lot."

A HOT favourite has emerged in the race for the Most Disingenuous Statement of the Year award. The Herald reports today that UEFA is investigating Rangers fans for alleged bigoted chanting during the Champions League matches against Villareal. The piece features a quite staggeringly shameless response from Mark Dingwall, editor of the Rangers fanzine Follow Follow. Rather than display any contrition or suggest - reasonably - that we should wait for the findings of the investigation, Mr Dingwall has this to say:

"I have no idea what a discriminatory song is or which part of the Rangers repertoire could possibly be viewed as such. For over 20 years, the behaviour of Rangers fans home and away has been second to none and Ibrox Stadium has a wonderful reputation as a safe place to watch football in a family atmosphere. Hysteria over one alleged incident should not be allowed to obscure that marvellous record.”

To which I would respond with that old anthem of international brotherhood and spiritual understanding: "We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood, surrender or you’ll die".

We live in a country obsessed by a single sport, resulting in saturation coverage. Yet sectarianism, the single greatest affliction of Scottish football, is scarcely mentioned by sports journalists. On the rare occasions that it is debated, many scuttle for the safety of the old cliché that it’s only a "mindless minority", even as the massed ranks belt out "F**k the Pope and the IRA" to a Tina Turner tune. Pundits actually reassert bigotry in the mainstream each time Rangers and Celtic play each other, when they slaver about the "biggest derby in the world" but ignore the bilious fuel that creates that unique Old Firm atmosphere.

And there are other guilty parties – me and the thousands of Scottish fans who rail against bigotry yet resign ourselves to its inevitability. UEFA’s action should prompt us to write to Lennart Johansson next time we hear Rangers fans glorying in the slaughter of Catholics; let them know we don’t accept it either, before any more damage is done to the reputation of Scottish supporters.

By progressing to the last 16 of the Champions League, Rangers opened up the behaviour of its supporters to wider international scrutiny. They're already finding out that the sensibilities of continental Europe, whose populace knows all about the perils of unchecked extremism, are somewhat different to our insular little nation.

THERE was a clatter and splash of flying crockery, quickly followed by a hiss of anger from my mother. Try as I might, I couldn’t recreate what I’d seen the previous night.

Old Hampden, 1984: like a Victorian alleyway in gaslight, the pitch is rescued from its gloomy environs; the stands are dark recesses of humanity.

Kenny Dalglish tames the ball on the right-hand corner of the box. He shifts his weight and coaxes the ball inside. There is no pause before his next devastating movement: the instep of his left foot strikes with piston-like fluidity. The ball hurtles, its trajectory never deviating. Arconada, the Spanish goalkeeper, flings his body in a graceful but futile grasp at thin air. The ball skims inside the junction of post. It slithers down the old-style net draped deep behind the posts and is enveloped, as if by a parent reunited with a lost child. Dalglish, beaming with delight and incredulity, wheels and raises both arms in unselfconscious triumph.

The next day I took out my Adidas Tango in an attempt to recreate the perfect goal. I succeeded only in shattering a quiet afternoon of tea and biscuits in the back garden.

TONIGHT I had the misfortune to tune into Radio Five's football phone-in and its unnervingly po-faced devotees. That the inanities of these people get aired is depressing enough - someone pass me a spoon to gouge my eyes out with the next time the radio spews out the dread words "Spoony, just wanted to talk about the left-back situation at Barnsley" - but what's particularly unsettling is that the programme's most alarming listeners are rewarded for their efforts.

The nominees for Fan of the Month were announced tonight. Among the choices were a Wigan supporter who hasn't missed a game in the last seven centuries and blithley drags his hapless wife along to reserve fixtures in Plymouth. He was competing with another candidate whose team I can't remember, thanks to a disturbing image that's dominating my memory banks: this second nominee deserves the accolade of top supporter for February, we're told, because his entire body is covered in tattoos advertising his team of choice. Are we really expected to vote for him because, say, 'Man U' is scrawled onto his shrivelled appendage but expands to reveal his team's full moniker when he becomes aroused by a Gary Neville square ball?

The sort of fixations venerated by Radio Five are less popular in everyday life; most people equate blank-eyed obsessiveness with a predilection for random violence. I certainly feel like I've been assaulted, which is why I'm on my 17th cup of coffee tonight. I don't want Tattoo Man getting into my dreams.

NICK Hornby wrote in Fever Pitch about years of mediocrity culminating in a moment of miraculous triumph, when Michael Thomas prodded in the last-minute goal that gave Arsenal the league in 1989. My football life is the anti-Fever Pitch.

I became a Pittodrie regular in 1983, a year of remarkable achievements unlikely to be repeated by Aberdeen FC. Only a few years later started a long period of decline, at first steady, then precipitous. By 1999, specious stastics had been uncovered to show that Aberdeen were the worst team in Europe, only 16 years after defeating SV Hamburg in the Super Cup to become the continent's best side.

I shouldn't whinge, of course. Most fans will never see their team launch a spectacular comeback against Bayern Munich or outplay Real Madrid in a European final. I should cherish those memories, I hear you say. But there's a problem: our family moved to Aberdeen in November 1983, and it was only then that my interest in the local football team was sparked. Until then I'd lived in rural Aberdeenshire and enjoyed successive passions for tractors - I knew far more about Massey Fergusons than Alex Ferguson - and Star Wars.

As Aberdeen switched through the gears against Real Madrid on a sodden Gothenburg night in 1983, I sat in the corner farthest from the TV, engrossed in a comic-book telling of Return of the Jedi. My dad, teetering on the edge of the settee, implored me to watch something that he claimed I would never forget. I tried, but couldn't get my head round the arcane adult obsession with two groups of men chasing a ball. Seeing me fidget, he gave up and I re-immersed myself in intergalactic battle. I only looked up in curiosity when I heard the guttural roar that followed John Hewitt's diving header.

This is why, when I witness the current team lurching from one ignominy to another, I draw no consolation from my memories of Gothenburg: they scarcely exist. The miraculous triumph preceded the mediocrity, and I missed it. So excuse me while I wallow.

TIMOTHY Treadwell spent 13 summers living with grizzly bears in Alaska until he and his girlfriend were eaten by one. For the last five of those summers he made video recordings of his adventures. These form the basis of Grizzly Man, a new documentary by German film-maker Werner Herzog.

Treadwell had drifted through life without finding a vocation. He’d been a waiter and an actor, unsuccessfully auditioning for Woody Harrelson’s role in Cheers. He’d changed his name and changed his life story, in a vain attempt to pin down a version of himself that he liked.

This mixed-up soul thought he’d found his niche by abandoning the chaos of the human world. But he had a sentimental view of nature. He gave the bears childish names like Mr Chocolate and larked about with them as though they were friends. He thought he’d found a place of order, a place he understood. Then, one day in 2003, a disaffected grizzly mauled and devoured him.

So what’s that got to do with football? The answer is that football supporters seek a similar sense of order amid chaos. Even if our team is faring badly, there’s the reassurance that at least it’s there, a constant focus for hope and ambitions. Pre-season, the Scottish Cup final, the World Cup: all come around at the same time, again and again and again. There was a sense of bewilderment among football aficionados at the uproar caused when the SFA insisted on playing a World Cup qualifier a few hours after Princess Diana’s funeral; football had always carried on regardless.

But we make the same mistake as Treadwell: we expect the dependency to be mutual. In reality, fans are routinely treated with casual contempt. Fixtures are shunted about to suit TV schedules, magnates buy into clubs as property investments, players kiss badges then double their wages elsewhere.

There’s a chilling moment near the end of Grizzly Man. The bear we presume to be Treadwell’s killer stares into the lens. You might recognise the look if you’ve been foolish enough to engage a professional footballer in conversation; it’s the same look of glassy-eyed indifference.

ONCE I'd gotten over being patronised by SFA high heidyin David Taylor ("They'll get a simply super weekend break in Paris or Rome" - I'm sure that's what he said) I tried to look on the bright side of the Euro 2008 draw.

Like just about everyone else, I was on the point of finding solace in the laboured observation dredged up whenever we play anyone halfway decent - "Ah, but we always do well against the big teams."

But, in a word, shite. It's an untruism that been trotted out so many times people have been hypnotised into believing it. So let's go through the fairly undemanding motions of ripping this particular argument to shreds.

Here's a list the 10 best-performing European teams of the last 20 years or so that won't be open to too much dispute: France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia, England, Spain, Sweden, Denmark.

When did we actually beat a team like that - or even some of those bubbling below - in a competitive match that counted? The Holland game in 2003 and the win at Wembley in 1999 don't count; we lost in two-legged ties both times, so start delving further back.

The Alamo recreation against Sweden at Hampden in 1996? 2-1 against the Swedes at Italia '90? Fair enough. So let's rule out our solid but unspectacular Scandinavian friends. What does that leave? Can anyone do better than Mo Johnston's poacher's masterclass, back in the days when it was still safe for him to walk down Sauchiehall Street, against France in March 1989?

We do well against the big teams? We keep the score down, more like.

THIS club has played its football in Scotland since its formation in the 19th century. It competes in the Scottish Premier League, its greatest achievement featured a team of 11 Scots and its greatest manager was Scottish. So why is it the Irish tricolore that dominates at Celtic Park?

Unlike some, I don't go apoplectic at the merest sight of green, white and orange among the home fans at Parkhead. Celtic have Irish roots: the club's formation was designed to benefit immigrants who made Glasgow their home. I don't see why this shouldn't be recognised, even celebrated. But I do have a problem when this warps into something else altogether. Like when the Willie Maley song - an exultant anthem that lists some of Celtic's greatest heroes - is given the unofficial coda of "and the IRA". Or, as I witnessed on the Queen Street-Bellgrove train on the way to a Celtic-Aberdeen game last May, when a well dressed group of 30-somethings in green-and-white leads the carriage in a song that mocks a woman's legs being blown off in the Brighton bombing.

These sort of ditties are, of course, routinely blamed on the fabled "mindless minority" that seems responsible for all of football's ills. So let's award the benefit of doubt and assume that most Celtic fans are innocent bystanders.

Even then, something still rankles. Occasionally you'll see a lonely saltire among the home fans at Celtic Park, but for the most part the ground is awash with tricolores. You'll see plenty of Ireland strips mixed in with with hooped Celtic tops and the Parkhead songbook is packed with Irish songs. Fields of Athenry is an evocative lament for the victims of the Irish potato famine that doesn't deserve to be inextricably linked to extremist republicanism. But if we're to believe that Celtic fans are singing to celebrate their heritage and not to provoke, where are the Scottish folk songs? It's not the celebration of Irishness that's the problem - it's the utter rejection of Scottishness.

Let me finish with a challenge. Along the M8, in Edinburgh, there's a football team with similar beginnings to Celtic. The clue's in the name: Hibernian. Next time you see Hibs on TV, see how many tricolores you can count. You shouldn't need a calculator.

MY BROTHER'S getting excited about his summer. He's off to the States for a coast-to-coast adventure after he finishes his final year at university. All well and good, but where he should have been was Germany. I've tormented him for years about how, eight years ago, I finished my final university exam, threw my books down and got on a flight from Glasgow to Charles de Gaulle. I arrived just in time to see the centre of Paris explode in tartan as John Collins equalised against Brazil. Then followed the finest holiday of my life, as a group of seven of us meandered through France in a blur of boozy camaraderie.

My brother won't be doing the same in Germany because Scotland didn't qualify for the World Cup this time. He's a little disappointed, as he's about the same age as I was for France '98. On the plus side he's looking forward to searching out Hunter S Thompson's last resting place, cruising through the Midwest and nursing a few bourbons along the way. But it's an experience he wouldn't have had but for Berti Vogts displaying the ineptitude of Bambi trying to figure skate.

We used to get all het up in Scotland about not getting past the first stages of tournaments. Now we have the poorest selection of players in living memory and a world in which far more countries have fallen for the football bug. We might not even qualify for another tournament for decades. That could be good thing: generations to come may wean our nation off football and develop a broader range of interests and possibilities - by 2020 there could be a boom in sitar players and Sanskrit scholars.

But this may be too late for me. I fear football has seeped into and colonised the farthest recesses of my brain. Is it healthy that I can still recite all the scores from the 1986 World Cup? Should I really know the birthplaces of the Aberdeen's players in Panini's 1984 sticker album? (Neale Cooper started life in India. Interesting.) I certainly shouldn't have been sitting with my trigger finger on the remote, itching to know the Inverness-Ayr United score. There must be better things to do on a Monday night.

THERE'S little to say this week. My granny, a powerful presence in our family, died a few days ago. I could trot out the usual cliche about death putting things into perspective, but I already knew football was trivial in the grand scheme of things. There's no point in demeaning granny - a lady as selfless, caring and magnaminous as they come - by holding her up against a sport riddled with shysters, braggarts and money-grabbers.

Instead, I've decided to come out with it and admit that I enjoyed the weekend's football, especially Aberdeen's unlikely comeback and Clyde's moral thumping of Celtic. The difference this weekend from any other was that I'd have derived the same solace whatever the scores. When you're confronted with distress that you're not used to and aren't sure how to handle, routine and habit help keep the spirits up.

I MISSED Pittodrie's final afternoon of footballing drudgery for 2005, still being marooned in Ireland. Even so, I shared in the plod towards yet another 0-0 draw - Aberdeen's third in four games - since I spent another self-flagellating afternoon in front of Ceefax page 321. While my dad and brother urged Aberdeen forward in the flesh, I spent my time imploring the TV to send a little message of happiness. But as my wretched afternoon reached its inevitable conclusion, I drew consolation from one thought: at least I didn't have to put up with the Inverness supporters in the South Stand.

Fans of Caley Thistle, and those of Livingston, are an odd breed. Both teams were formed in 1994, and their supporters have a peculiarly sunny outlook. Their relationships with rival fans have not curdled over decades of enmity, so their songbooks feature little more than the simple chants of encouragement, usually "Cah-lee/Lih-vee (clap, clap, clap)". The bilious and imaginative insults hurled by rival supporters are conspicuous by their absence. And unlike most teams, Caley and Livvy aren't weighed down by decades of mediocrity. While opposition fans wallow in their side's also-ran status, Caley and Livvy fans, in their unrelenting cheeriness, seem oblivious to the likelihood that they'll only see their team win a trophy once every few decades.

Livingston have a drummer who follows his team across Scotland, and each time I've sat at Aberdeen-Livvy games I've heard several splutters of rage directed at his incessant thumping. That's because he unnerves us, although not by the noise he makes. The problem is that he and his pals are so unnaturally perky - like Stepford wives in the away end.