Gary Lineker and Terry Butcher are entitled to think Celtic should never have received a penalty against Motherwell.
The whole furore over the Celtic penalty has caused a meltdown over all portions of the mainstream media.
But what they are not entitled to do is invent their own version of what happened.
Ex-SFA referee’s take on the KMI Celtic penalty verdict vs Motherwell.
The bitterness continues. Let us know your thoughts Celtic fans 👇
Lineker & Butcher’s weird Celtic ‘fingertip’ penalty theory
Discussing the controversial award on The Rest Is Football, Lineker asked Butcher, “I mean, you must follow obviously Scottish football because of your time there.
“I’d be interested to see what you made of the whole thing last week with Celtic sneaking the league over Hearts. I think it was a shame for Scottish football, wasn’t it, that Hearts didn’t win it? Well, and that very dubious VAR decision.”
Butcher replied: “Yeah, the VAR. You can’t get rid of VAR now. It’s there for good, but it’s got to improve.
“I would have loved to have actually fingertipped the ball 20 yards into the stand.”
Lineker responded: “I know, exactly.”
Butcher continued: “I mean, the fingers, it must be so powerful in his fingers, when he did it.”
Lineker added: “I mean, anyone that’s remotely followed football, watched football, I found it extraordinary, but anyway.”
That is the part of the discussion that makes the least sense.
Butcher’s argument appears to shift the debate away from whether the ball hit Sam Nicholson’s hand to now his fingertips.
The problem is that nobody involved in the incident ever claimed that happened. No referee. No VAR official. No Celtic player. Nobody.
Instead, Lineker and Butcher spent their time mocking a scenario that exists only in their own version of events.
The real argument was sitting right in front of them
The irony is there was a genuine football discussion to be had.
Did VAR get involved correctly? Was the handball interpretation right? Should the threshold for these decisions be changed?
Reasonable people can disagree on all of those questions.
Instead, two experienced broadcasters reduced the entire controversy to jokes about super-powered fingertips.
That might make for an entertaining podcast clip, but it is not much of an argument.
Lineker even claimed that “anyone that’s remotely followed football” would find the decision extraordinary.
The trouble is that the pair never actually explained why.
They simply invented a theory that nobody else was using and then laughed at it.
You can think the Celtic penalty was wrong if you wish. Plenty of people do.
What is harder to understand is how two seasoned football figures ended up arguing against a version of the incident that never existed in the first place.
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