Celtic’s match against Dundee United on Sunday was played on a truly awful pitch.
To be clear, this doesn’t excuse an equally awful performance and deserved defeat for the Hoops on the day, as Martin O’Neill rightly acknowledged.
You haven’t got much chance of winning titles if you use pitches
as your excuse. And whilst this was easily one of the worst, we’ve seen some abominations before.
What position would Celtic be in NOW if Brendan Rodgers was still in charge?
Things could've been very different…
The worst pitches Celtic have played on
Celtic 2-0 Rangers (Hampden, 2015)
This was the first time Celtic played the modern iteration of Rangers, a showpiece League Cup semi-final in February 2015.
Ronny Deila’s men comfortably won on the day, but one of the match’s big talking points was the embarrassing state of the pitch at Scotland’s national stadium.
Scott Brown – who, nevertheless, was outstanding in the game – called it “shocking” and “the worst pitch I’ve played on for a long, long time”.
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It was just the second game played at Hampden in the aftermath of the Commonwealth Games, with the other being contested the day prior.
Even by simply watching back the highlights, you can clearly see the pitch cutting up at every corner.
Motherwell 1-1 Celtic (Fir Park, 2009)
Mention this game to Andreas Hinkel and you’ll probably set him off on a four-hour rant.
The German defender absolutely hammered the Fir Park pitch – which was consistently terrible during this period – after a dismal game of football on a pitch with almost no grass.
He didn’t mince his words, saying it was “just sand,” “like a beach” and “like a wasteland from a Brazilian favela”. He concluded that no professional should ever be made to play on a pitch like this.
The game itself was a meaningful one in a turbulent SPL season for Celtic, as it confirmed that the Hoops had blown a seven-point lead over Rangers.
They wouldn’t recover at the end of the campaign, and lost out on the title for the only time in Gordon Strachan’s four-year reign.
Your INSTANT REACTION to that loss 😡
Is the title race over?
Lincoln Red Imps 1-0 Celtic (Victoria Stadium, 2016)
This was easily one of the most embarrassing results in Celtic’s history, irrespective of the fact that the club went on to win the second leg of the tie and have one of its best-ever domestic seasons.
In Brendan Rodgers’ first competitive match in charge, they travelled to Gibraltar to play on a truly dreadful artificial pitch. Your local 3G pitch is probably better than this.
Unlike the previous two examples that were pitches in an unusually bad state, this was the permanent condition of the only official football pitch in Gibraltar, where the part-time side completed an ultimate upset victory over Rodgers’ Celts.
Now remembered as the “Shock of Gibraltar” by local media, the game saw a full-strength Celtic team look utterly incapable of playing in uniquely challenging conditions against semi-professional opposition. Remarkable stuff.
Horror stories have since spread of the game which Rodgers himself has openly had a laugh about.
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