Scotland fans are starting to get really excited ahead of the Tartan Army’s return to a major tournament after a 23-year absence – but the remarkable double-standard over fans gathering in London for the Euro 2020 clash with England in spite of Coronavirus restrictions has left a really bad taste in the mouth.
The Tartan Army are expected to descend on London in their thousands for the Wembley clash with the Auld Enemy, despite warnings from London’s mayor Sadiq Khan that there won’t be any Fan Zone for thousands of ticketless supporters to watch the game.
The Scottish FA and Scottish Government have echoed those warnings, telling fans without tickets not to travel to the capital – but there is a distinctly different tone in certain sections of the media.
Fans on Twitter have been quick to highlight the hypocrisy, using two front pages from the Daily Record to emphasise the point, and it is hard to argue against it.
With only seventeen days between them, the front pages on May 17 and June 3, leave no ambiguity over what is viewed acceptable.
After Rangers fans gathered in their thousands to celebrate the club’s first title win in a decade, it was open season as everyone and anyone piled in to blast the club and supporters.
While some will no doubt try and portray it as only being the shocking scenes that followed later in the night that were criticised and not fans gathering, they are (to be blunt) not being honest in the slightest.
Rangers – club and fans – were criticised for the socially-distanced pyro display on the Friday night, they were criticised for the joyous celebrations outside the stadium and they were criticised for fans in George Square partying.
So to now see fans actively encouraged to ignore the warnings and not travel 500 miles to cheer on Steve Clarke’s side if they don’t have a ticket is beyond ridiculous.
For fans who will travel down without tickets, their usual meeting place of Trafalgar Square will be unavailable with a Fan Zone for key workers being hosted there instead.
While everyone wants things back to normal as soon as possible, there’s no justification for the double standard when it comes to fans gathering outside in spite of restrictions.
Rangers fans on Twitter were quite rightly annoyed by the hypocritical stance taken by some of the media, especially given the spitefulness of some of the critics.
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