VESTI LA GIUBBA (Canio CALEDONIA … 1 Arlecchino Italiano … 2)

La gente paga, e rider vuole qua. Aye, the audience paid their money and they wanted to laugh alright. So many of them wanted to be a typical tartan army crowd. Half of the kilted cunts stayed long enough to cheer the sleaze of World football off the picth and exchange camera-friendly sportsmanship with the famously gracious (!!) travelling Azzurri tifosi. But these were the same Braveheart DVD-owning CLOWNS (google Vesti La Giubba and this might all make more sense) who pissed off to the boozer before their own team, their own country, came back out onto the pitch for the much more deserved lap of honour. The real Scotland support got it right yesterday. The exhibitionist gits got it more wrong than ever. For once, the Tartan army’s penchant for lauding their team even in defeat was totally apposite. Scotland’s National XI have done us so proud during this campaign. I stayed on to help FORCE those disrtraught Scotland players back out onto the Hampden turf for a circuit of the pitch. Faddy, Bazza, Hartley, Gordon and co wouldn’t have enjoyed it at the time but, when they reach my age, the memory of that appreciation will rank alongside any of their winners medals or caps. I’ve been present when Scotland have qualified for major tournaments in the past. But, despite not making it to EURO2008, this was our best ever qualifying campaign. Those players deserved to know that.

But the tits at Hampden who were more interested in swapping a scarf or a handshake with followers of Gli Azzurri need a wake-up call like never before. I’d never advise or desire violence or even animus as animated as my own yesterday towards opposing fans, but neither do I like to see anyone take the piss out of us: Especially when it’s us, taking the piss out ourselves with such meek acceptance of another nation’s fans and players “right” to enjoy more succes than us. Displaying any generosity towards those all-white bastards yesterday was the equivelant of getting on stage and singing while, off-stage, another member of the cast is having it away with yer Missus (again, opera lovers will get what I’m on about - I’m keeping the mood Italian and treacherous …)

Let me just put this to you: Imagine, if you will, yesterday’s roles had been reversed. Scotland have just scored a last-minute winner in Rome to put Italy out of the European Championships at the very death of the qualifying stage. What’s more, the winning goal comes from a decision which isn’t so much dodgy as side-splittingly hilarious. A farcically bad award leads to a free-kick from which Scotland put Italy out of the European Championships, in front of 80,000 in Rome, and the Scotland team run over to celebrate like crazy with the sliver of support we have in a packed Stadio Olimpico. WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE HAPPENED THEN?!!!

Our fans would be bottled and stabbed and beaten. The referee would be lucky to escape the stadium with his life. First the Italian players would set about the officials then they would probably set about our players as we tried to get back up the tunnel. They would, in short, do everything possible to turn it into a riot and perversely twist their cavalcade of psychotic petulance into justification for having the game replayed. Not one Italian fan would stand and applaud Scotland off the pitch. Not one Scotland player would dare head for the centre circle to TAKE A BOW like those insolent gobshites did yesterday - and UEFA’s offices would be besieged within minutes by every sleaze-ball lawyer and official the FIGC could possibly launch over the Alps.

It happened to us yesterday - the end game described above happened to us. And the “Most loveable fans in the world” stayed long enough to applaud the cunts who perpetrated it upon us, and then fucked off tae the boozer before the Scotland players re-emerged. A full Hampden saw Italy off the pitch. A half-empty Hampden got Scotland back out onto it. Half the Scotland fans love to PUT ON THE COSTUME of football fans - but they show themselves up at such times: They’re bigger cuckolds than dear old Pagliaccio ever was (Wikipedia - google - whatever).

Don’t get me wrong. I was a wee bit embarrassed to hear poor Alex McLeish rant a wee bit about how “The big nations always get the 50-50 decisions”. As former manager of the biggest team in Scotland he should know better than to back-up the kind of conspiracy shite we always hear levelled at Rangers. I think it is interesting that Germany, Italy, France, England and Holland all get to pay this Wednesday, knowing EXACTLY what they need to do, while so many of the smaller nations had their final qualifyer yesterday - but that could just be down to seeding. Anyway. More to the point, as many of the key bad decisions yesterday went OUR way. Italy should have been 2-0 up and Bazza was offside for our equaliser. We should have had a penalty and Italy shouldn’t have been awarded that last-minute free-kick. That’s my third Scotland-Italy match in Glasgow. The first was 0-0, the second 1-1 and, as far as I’m concerned, yesterday’s was 2-2 … but just in terms of shit key decisions. Italy are clearly the better side, they have better fitness, technique and street-wise smarts. Their desire is as clearly directed as any nation on earth - it’s just that they take it one step further by shrouding their cold cynicism in layers of empty showy emoting: They disguise it as passion and emotion but their histrionics only ever unsettle the opponent - their pleading and greetin’ is nothing more than cowardly smoke and mirrors … but it fucking works.

It worked when they got Zidane sent off in last year’s World Cup final. It worked when they got Torsten Frings suspended for last year’s World Cup semi-final. The two players in question DID committ offences - but both were committed under extreme and disgusting provocation and it was only in punishing the crimes that FIFA observed the letter of the law. Because they’re scared of the Italians and because the Italians have no shame. Both Frings and Zidane, the best players in the two sides which stood between Italy and their fourth world cup (achieved in the shadow of YET ANOTHER match-fixing scandal and with more football-related italian fatalities just around the corner), were removed from matches involving Italy by video evidence which only Italian protestations forced the relevant officials to view.

And every time 7ft 8inch Luca Toni booted a Scotland player yesterday then fell to the ground like a whining, screeching pig whenever his opponent as much as looked at him in the wake of these assaults, I was reminded of every other scumbag, guttersnipe, cowardly little trail of shite the Italians have weaved on their way to successes they are perfectly capable of achieving fairly, such is the depth of talent among their squads. The Azzurri MO is “do it to them before they do it to you”. However, it turns out that the Italians are largely the only ones doing it to anybody. They’re judging everyone else by their own disgusting standards.

Did you really want to be seen applauding that off the pitch at Hampden?

Be the better man, yes. Dont whine and moan about decisions, and take a set-back square on the jaw - ABSOLUTELY. But don’t bend over, flip yer kilt over yer waist and let the scumbags slip one up yer chuff for good measure! I was talking to a Roma Ultra in a city centre bar last night and he was explaining to me that Scotland fans were much better than Italian fans. Italna fans were, he said, not very nice. I knew this. I’ve been to a few games in italy. I’ve even stood on the Curva Pisani with Atalanta’s ultras, one of whom I’m related to - the very boys who were rioting in the same spot last weekend. But I really don’t mind football fans behaving a bit mentally - at least it proves they can actually back-up all their posturing. What I object to is football fans behaving like VICTIMS.

I told the Romanisti that it was ironic - that we should be the nasty fans because we never won fuck-all, and that the Italians, with four World Cups and a Henri Delauney under their belt, should really be the more relaxed, sporting and generous. And then we both looked at each other with a silent international acknowledgement of the fact that the vicious-natured fans are always the ones more likely to enjoy on-field success.

At yet another city centre bar, even later, I had a pish at one urinal while two other kilties discussed the days events between singing and dancing like men who’d just won the lottery: “Aye, it wiz nae surprise, really - there wus nae way Italy wir ever gonnae lose at Hampden”

“Aye - bang-on - ah mean, there’s nae way Italy could have gone back hame wi a defeat: They’d have got killed when they got back tae Rome.”

Jezus fucking H Christ!

When will we learn? Or, more accuratley, when will the Scotland support ever again become as genuinely fervent as so many of its members profess to be. When we will we resume going to the football for football’s sake. When will I be able to join a pre-match party of Scotland fans, other than those carefully selected by myself as true mates, who will actually talk about the game? When will the day ever be about THE GAME rather than making as much of a drunken exhibition of ourselves as possible. Hey, I love bevvying and I love my kebabs - I even enjoy dressing up like a tit and making a total knob of myself every now and then but, funnily enough, being a football fan, I take my football team quite seriously, be it club or country.

Passion - not fashion.

There was no greeting fae me yesterday at full-time. Plenty bile directed at the all-white swine celebrating below me, though. It is a complimeht to see the Italians celebrating defeating your team with the the same fervour they displayed when you watched them lifting the actual World Cup on telly a year and a few months back. However, I think far too much of my own country’s team and far too little of how the Italians “get their edge” to applaud those cunts in the flesh when they’ve just done us. Drink when ye’ve got something to celebrate - yes - and yesterday WAS to be celebrated in muted fashion: When Scotland are put out of a group such as Gruop B by conceding a last-minuet goal to the World Champions in our final fixture, you HAVE to look at where we were in the world rankings at the outset of this campaign and you HAVE to be proud as fuck of what our players achieved.

The dissapointment, when it’s on this scale, cannot be expressod or expelled in one night. I could actually have a laugh at times after this game because you know this another slow-burner - this is another of those football teases which will get harder to take as the years go by. The non-occurrence of Ten-In-A-Row gets more dissapointing with every year I’ve watched Rangers since 1998. The Euro 2008 campaign will similairly be a source of as much pride as lasting chagrin. The knowledge of what went into taking things down to the wire actually heightens the pathos with regard to the material loss. But there’s more to it this time. I actually think yesterday is a huge set-back. I think if we HAD qualified we would have carried on til at least the quarter-finals of EURO 2008. Sense of adventure is everything and less-fancied nations always shine in the EUROS in a way they’ll never shine in a World Cup. But an easier World Cup 2010 qualifying group may encourage a cockiness and slackness amongst our media and then our players.

Our fans? Only the 20,000 who remained out of a 51,000 crowd yesterday even know what a qualifying campaign is. The rest are only interested in being part of some Daily Record-created festival of drunken stupidness. Glasgow City centre thought it was being a carnival - but it was like hell on earth. If the hordes at Queen Street and central had all just worn black and screamed “all I have in my life is alcohol”, it would have been less sinister. As it was the attempts to camouflage it as harmless buffoonery or sentimental patriotism gave it a hue of horror which even the perma-pissing rain couldn’t match. Scotland’s footballers are the only ones not fooled. They knew what yesterday was all about. And I think they suspected it was largely wasted on most of the plumbs declaring their avid interest in “the big game”.

The players also displayed the stuff whch I would like Scotland to be all about: Intellect, spirit and belief - optimisim and altruism. Amny scotland fans think this is what they too are about but they merely espouse it while drinking themsleves into a stupor and blythley abusing Alex McLeish’s tactics between anecodtes about their office job and going for pies and pishes during THE BIGGEST SCOTLAND GAME FOR DECADES. Tickets to these games really are wasted on some people. But the players of this Scotland team have been practising what others from their country preach.

We don’t cheat. Never. I like that Scotland DO do things our way - the fair-as-possible way (God, I hope there aren’t any older Welsh folk reading this!). And I love that set-backs, such as that suffered by Alan Hutton early on, are used as inspiration rather than an excuse to give up. Our team also know that they’re achieving well above expectations and DO NOT get carried away with it. But this is only ON the pitch. OFF it I really need there to be change or I really can’t see me going back to any more major Scotland games. The Tartan Army have gone way beyond the point of proving we’re “not like English hooligans” - as if that was ever an achievement anyway!! (I don’t stab folk - ain’t I great??!!”) - they’re now just actively amplifying Scotland’s English-imposed stereotypes. We all dress like buffooons - in clothes the English designed for us - and we get pissed before the game in a way which proves we’re ONLY ABOUT the getting pissed; and, worst of all, we’re still embracing defeat like pathetic, perma-victim idiots because - HEY - at least then we get to prove how “sporting” we are!!!

Yet, even this trait does not extend towards the Scotland team. What’s the glory, it seems teh Tartan Army feels, in being nice about your OWN country? That won’t get you any UEFA fair-play awards!! No, we spend too much time licking the arse of whoever actually eliminates us from competitions to properly back our own team. Just when you think these football tourist idiots are more interested in talking about their jobs, their wives, their “pure gallousness” at the golf club last Friday (Oh, see me - I’m just like a real life ship yard worker … from Newton Mearns), you suddenly hear them effecting their facsimile of a working class or genuine fitbaw fan and you suddenly wish they’d go back to just treatin the day as another social occassion: “You’re shite Naysmith!”, “Why the fuck’s McLeish taking Brown off??!!”, “Get the ball down and pass it Scotland!!” …

The moment we went 3-1 up against Ukraine at Hampden, in our third-last qualifying match, this Scotland team went BEYOND REPROACH. The miracle of this campaign was confirmed. We would finish no lower than third and the only two teams who could finish above us were the two best on the planet. And yet, yesterday, I still had tartan tits all round me in the top tier of the South Stand feigning (a) interest in (b) frustration at and (c) knowledge of, the tactical side of the game. McLeish and every one of his players were heroes bfore they even stepped onto that pitch. Anything which went wrong therefater was solely down to the fact we were playing THE FUCKING WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!

We lost a goal after 72 seconds to the World Cup holders. And we came back. And we actually looked like we’d beat them for a while. Of course “Looking like” “probable” victors is worth nothing in terms of points or results. You watch the game long enough, you know the Italys, Germanys, Hollands, Frances, Spains and Englands all tend to get too many “last-minute reprieves” or “favours” for them to be anything other than a sign of inate quality. But Scotland, where we were three years ago, could have been losing five or six to Italy after conceding so early. That we actually equalised and pinned them back at crucial stages - and that they needed a wee reffing favour as much as we did - is a massive compliment, a testament to how this Scotland team deserves absolutely no slagging whatsoever.

Glorious failure? The “failure” to qualify from this group was as abject as a five-year old’s “failure” to grasp the finer points of Cartesian dualism. No. There was no failure. Just glorious improvement. If our support could only catch up with the team’s advances I might begin feeling at home once more, at home in my nation’s home stadium.

Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto!