If you think that football in Scotland is not ripe for corruption, then you haven’t been paying attention to what happens elsewhere in European football

In the aftermath of Sunday’s victory over the Ibrox side, I settled down to watch the excellent series Bad Sport.

I immediately zoomed in on the episode called Footballgate, which tells the story of the 2006 Italian refereeing scandal.

It seemed pretty relevant in the wake of the fallout from Sunday’s game.

Being heavily invested in Scottish football as a Celtic supporter for over 40 years, and having experienced something far worse in our game, it was interesting to look at corruption in another league.

What I realised after watching Footballgate, is that our scandal in 2012, was far more extreme than what happened in Italy.

The difference between Scottish football’s scandal and Italian football’s is that in Italy, they seemed to learn something from what happened.

In Scotland, absolutely nothing was learned from Rangers 1872 collapse and liquidation in 2012.

Today, it is an anomaly, the Ibrox side, the SMSM and the SFA, pretend it never even happened.

We all know it did, but we have a narrative rammed down our throat that it didn’t.

This is why Scottish football will never learn a lesson from it until it all blows up in our faces again.

But, to begin with, what stood out to me far more in Footballgate, was the manipulation of Italian referees by Luciano Moggi in the 2004/05 season.

This particular subject is one that is current and very raw in our own game at the moment, especially after Sunday’s events and subsequent fallout.

After seeing how easily referees were influenced in Italy, it made me realise that it has to be far easier to influence and manipulate referees in the Scottish game.

The reason I say this is because the majority of refs in Scotland only support one team.

Added to this, we all know they do not have to declare their allegiance, something which ironically, Ibrox fans are now calling for.

In Italy, as with in England, allegiances have to be declared.

So, as can be seen in Footballgate, they were influenced by Luciano Moggi and the heads of refereeing at the time, Paolo Bergamo and Pierluigi Pairetto.

Referees who performed poorly or did not give decisions to Juventus, found themselves refereeing games in Serie B.

Some even found themselves sacked for literally just doing their jobs and making the right calls.

Pino Narducci, a public prosecutor and Attilio Auricchio, an Italian police officer, decided to take on the might of Juventus and Luciano Moggi to bring down the refereeing corruption in Italy.

But they had no idea what they were up against and as they went deeper into the underbelly of Italian football, they discovered a system of cheating so intricate, it was designed to influence games that Juventus weren’t even playing in.

Referees were told to give cards to the best players in teams that might be playing against Juventus in the next round of fixtures.

Moggi would pick out the top performing players who were on the verge of suspensions and instruct Bergamo to tell his refs to ensure they ended up suspended.

This then meant that Juventus would not have to face these players, thus increasing their chances of winning those contests.

One particular referee, Gianluca Paparesta, decided not to play ball with Moggi during a match against Reggina in December 2004.

He did not influence the game in favour of Juventus, rather he ruled out two of their goals to ensure they were defeated 2-1.

As a result, Moggi locked him into a changing room after the match, ensured his linesman was sacked and had Paparesta refereeing in Serie B the following week.

His reach in refereeing circles was huge and this is what brings me back to the game in Scotland, and Ibrox in particular.

Moggi was then the CEO of Juventus and at that same time, David Murray was the owner of Rangers 1872.

Like Moggi in the Italian game, Murray’s reach was huge in the Scottish game, he practically owned the SMSM and he was deep into the EBT years then.

So let me ask this question, what level of influence, at that time, did David Murray have over the refereeing fraternity in Scotland?

Unlike Moggi, Murray had the advantage of full support from most referees in Scotland, simply because they supported his team.

The question is, how many of these referees were in his pocket?

Think about it, help the club you support and receive some nice back handers for it too.

A match that has really stands out from around that time, if a little further on, is the contest between Rangers and Dundee Utd at Ibrox in May 2008.

Craig Levein’s post match interview is an eye opener, his anger is there for all to see.

YouTube: Craig Levein post match interview

Clearly he was incensed at what transpired on the field of play that day and he doesn’t hold back.

It is one of those rare moments where the mask of Scottish football, for a split second, was ripped off to reveal the grotesque face of our game.

Almost immediately it was returned.

You would have thought at the time that Levein’s outburst would have been the catalyst to the floodgates opening on Scottish referees, but it wasn’t.

You would be hard pressed to find another interview like that one.

Which raises the question, what happened to Levein after his outburst?

Why did we never see anything like that from him again?

Was he bought off?

He was fined £5000 for speaking his mind, did someone soften that blow to shut him up?

One thing is for sure, Scottish refereeing has not changed in the interim, if anything it’s worse.

I think we all despair at the state of our game at the moment and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to the corruption from the top, right down to the bottom.

In the last 13 years alone, we have seen the Ibrox side post losses which are in the tens of millions.

We have seen a convicted criminal become their chairman.

That same chairman receive then received the cold shoulder from the City of London.

We have seen countless refereeing decisions that beggar belief and continue to beggar belief.

Sunday was just another example of decisions like that.

What’s even funnier about Sunday is the fact that all that was really highlighted was the Auston Trusty incident.

Yet there were many more incidents that warranted attention.

Derek Cornelius on Johnny Kenny.

The blatant shove on Reo Hatate in the Ibrox penalty box, which didn’t even warrant a second look.

VAR Andrew Dallas agreeing with Nick Walsh that Tony Ralston falling over in the box with his arms tucked underneath him, while being hit with a shot, warranted a penalty.

We witnessed racism on Sunday that at times made the KKK look tame, all for Martin O’Neill’s benefit, since Ibrox fans hate him so much.

The famine song even reared it’s ugly head again.

So, you ask, why is nothing ever done about it?

Why does it progressively get worse?

It gets worse because it is systemic and our club does not have the courage to stand up to it.

As we discussed on Monday evening’s Trinity Tims podcast, our board seems to welcome it.

Especially when you consider there was no action taken in the aftermath of last March’s Glasgow Derby at Celtic Park, where the Ibrox fans belted out the Billy Boys with zero repercussions.

Police Scotland didn’t even have the courage to stand up to it and deal with it properly when all of the corruption was revealed in 2012.

Added to that, there were too many Rangers 1872 facing officers in the Police force, and that remains the case today.

The Ibrox club are still are seen as the establishment club and they have too many sympathisers throughout society in Scotland.

We don’t have a Pino Narducci or an Attilio Auricchio, ready to tear our corrupt game apart and take down those who allow a rabid dog like the Ibrox side go unchecked.

Look at the extent of the corruption that went on in Italy back in the early part of this century.

In a game where referees had to declare their allegiances.

Then ask yourself this; in a country where no allegiances need to be declared, and there are already many proven instances of corruption against our club, do you really believe that all of a sudden, the game in Scotland is now squeaky clean?

That nobody is corrupt in any way, shape, or form?

Sunday’s VAR Andrew Dallas is the son of former head of referees, Hugh Dallas.

Dallas lost his job because he was caught circulating anti-Catholic emails in relation to the Pope’s visit to Scotland in 2010.

Do you think that Andrew Dallas likes Celtic?

More to the point, why do you think it was so easy for him to award that penalty last Sunday?

Anybody thinking that our game was never wide open to corruption during the Murray years, and does not remain wide open to corruption, is delusional.

Yet we’re called conspiracy theorists?

Corruption is the Elephant in the room of Scottish football.

Sometimes it’s so blatant, you just can’t miss it.

The SFA could start taking this threat seriously by making it mandatory for referees to declare their allegiances.

Then again, the SFA itself has always been ripe for corruption, and plenty of historic evidence of this exists.

But that’s a story for another day.

What I wanted to highlight in this article is that in a country where referees had to declare their allegiances, corruption was still rife.

In Scotland, we don’t even do that.

Yet everybody is expected to accept that all Scottish referees are just decent, hard working, honest guys?

That would be a hell of a lot easier to accept if we knew who they supported.

But for some reason, the SFA feels that isn’t necessary.

Until that day comes, we just have to continue to exist in stasis in a game that is rigged.

And if you think it isn’t rigged, just reference Sunday…