WHEN BBC Scotland began broadcasting A View From the Terrace in 2019 I greeted it with a mixture of delight and surprise. This was a football show that could only have been made in Scotland. It celebrated those unadorned and unheralded outposts of the game that keep what’s left of its soul after the rest of it has been sacrificed to corporate muscle and notational performance analysis.

This is not to disparage the technological tools of elite performance data only to acknowledge that in dozens of small communities throughout the land football means much more than winning cups and making profits. In these places it’s woven into the fabric of local, working-class culture. In communities stripped bare of their industrial heritage these small clubs are often all that remains for people to derive a measure of local pride.

A View From the Terrace gives them a voice and a platform and tells those of us who follow the big clubs that these teams and their communities are as vital and important to the game we love as any of our grand designs. What’s more; the programme does this with eloquence, wit and love for the men and women who keep the lights on in Brora, Orkney and Kirkcudbright. It has enthusiasm, originality and a granular knowledge of the game wherever it’s played in Scotland and at whatever level. And it’s by far the best work BBC Scotland has produced about football in decades.         

Nor is there any sense of condescension or smarty-pants irony. When the four lads who front the series give us their views from the terrace they discuss the recent vicissitudes of East Fife with the same intensity as we might deploy when assessing the recent impact of Jota and Kyoto. 

This being Scottish football, everyone gets the pish royally ripped out of them and not least themselves. Occasionally, they ridicule the pretensions and delusions of Scotland’s biggest clubs. Last week they gently mocked the way in which Celtic supporters burst with pride whenever a global football icon praises the brilliant atmosphere at Parkhead on grand European occasions.

The latest to do so was Hibs’ new American signing, Chris Mueller, who said that his former Orlando team-mate Kaka had recommended Scottish football because “Celtic Park was the best place he’d played”. This led to some banter about Celtic fans beaming with pride over this. The show’s brilliant host, Craig Telfer (a Stenhousemuir fan) said: “If there’s a set of supporters who love to hear more about how much opposition players enjoy the atmosphere …”

Earlier in the show they’d all expressed their admiration for Ange Postecoglou and the attacking flair of this Celtic team. Yet, in the days that followed the View From the Terrace lads were attacked by some Celtic supporters on social media for daring to mock our delight whenever one of football’s Hollywood superstars name-checks our club.

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Kaka follows a long list of the world’s football elite to have done this: Lionel Messi; Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandes, Paulo Maldini, Rio Ferdinand. For a few years, I used to spend entire transfer windows waiting for the news I’d dreamt of: that on deadline day we’d swooped to sign Zlatan Ibrahimovic because he’d once expressed his desire to finish his playing days at Celtic Park.

A friend of mine once tried to construct an entire team of superstars who’d talked about their love for Celtic Park’s “great atmosphere”. He actually spent the best part of a day on the internet looking for a quote by Pele about Celtic because someone had sworn blind to him that someone else had told him that the best player in the world “loved the Celtic”.

I laughed out loud at this segment in the show. Just as I’d laughed at the Hearts fan who’d ‘review-bombed’ a coffee shop enterprise by the Tynecastle defender John Souter in retaliation for him agreeing to join Rangers on a pre-contract. The supporter tweeted: “Worst coffee ever. Wouldn’t give this coffee to my worst enemy. Very slimy and sneaky coffee. Very injured.”

I laughed because I am that Celtic supporter. I derive a childish glee from hearing that yet another great foreign player “loves the Celtic Park atmosphere”. This never diminishes with each new convert to the Celtic cause.

Whenever we’ve had our arses skelped by Barcelona or Bayern or PSG I actually do seek solace in imagining these players coming into training the next day and sending out pictures of Celtic Park to all their friends and family. It’s normal, I think, to be proud of this and to poke fun at it at the same time. It’s’ reassuringly pure and innocent and daft.

Occasionally, too I’ve taken this patter to extremes myself. During a period between 2008 and 2011 when our fortunes were at a low ebb you sometimes had to make your own fun. Mine was to kid on a couple of my more gullible Rangers acquaintances that all manner of world leaders and entertainment figures “had a soft spot for the Hoops”.

One chap, a Special Forces veteran who claimed intimate knowledge of Africa and the Middle East, was holding forth in my favourite Glasgow city centre pub about Colonel Gaddafi and the Libyan situation

“Did you know that Gaddafi loves the Celtic,” said I.

“Aye right.”

“Nope; he actually does. He was a big pal of the old Maltese Prime Minister, Dom Mintoff. And when Celtic played the Maltese champions, Sliema Wanderers in the second round of the European Cup in 1971 it was not long after Gaddafi had come to power in neighbouring Libya.

“And so Mintoff invited Gaddafi to be his guest at the second leg of the European tie because this was a big occasion in Maltese sporting history.

“Gaddafi, as everyone knows, ascribes sacred powers to the colour green. And when he saw the Celtic supporters wearing lots of green Dom Mintoff turned to Gaddafi and said: 'They are wearing green in your honour, Excellency.'

“And that’s why Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya came to love the mighty Glasgow Celtic.”

Over the years I’ve enrolled Henry Kissinger, John McEnroe, President Mitterand of France, President Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Che Guevara and Princess Grace of Monaco in this international Celtic Supporters Club.

It’s utterly infantile, but it makes me happy during times when we’ve had a bit of a doing on the park. And it’s completely okay for fans of other clubs to have a laugh when we list all the great players who’ve fallen in love with the famous “Celtic Park atmosphere”.