McCann you believe it?

Celtic's Fergus McCann has got big ideas. Problem is they're almost all bad ones, as Gary Oliver explains

In the week scientists went loopy over what they believed to be an organism from Mars, Celtic’s owner and managing director, Fergus McCann, reminded fans that he is Scottish football’s own little green monster – one that remains extremely hostile to its alien environment.

Contributing to a Radio Scotland broadcast on the ramifications of the Bosman ruling, McCann outlined his vision for the Scottish League by expounding the most preposterous concept one is ever likely to hear: “I’d like to see an eight or ten-club league, with interlocking matches against English clubs which count for each league’s results.”

Pardon? “Scottish teams would play each other, let’s say, three times and play each English club once,” McCann elucidated. “By the same fashion, the English clubs would play each other twice and the Scottish team once. You’re adding something to the scene.”

Quite what that something would be, other than offering a gift to satirists, remains undisclosed.

Fergus McCann’s utterances are occasionally whimsical but always profit-driven. Yet initially the slight, aging figure that descended on Glasgow looked an unlikely tycoon: his flat cap and thin moustache (sadly now shorn) evoked a caricature from the Neighbourhood Watch. But it soon became clear that McCann’s philosophy owed more to Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko than Percy Sugden.

There is an obvious temptation to regard McCann and his Ibrox counterpart, David Murray, as having hearts sculpted from the same piece of stone. But whereas Murray’s unmerciful quest for a European league has – for Rangers, anyway – a cold logic, fans are now accustomed to Fergus’ regular flights of fancy; only a few months ago, for example, he urged the Scottish League to admit a club or two from Ireland.

But then Fergus McCann’s credentials have been in question ever since he, the exiled ‘fan’, jetted in from Canada to resume his spat with the club’s old board, ignorant that Celtic were to play a cup semi-final the following evening.

And besides his having a surname other than Kelly or White (the two dynasties who had presided over Celtic’s decline), McCann won supporters’ confidence largely through association with the popular former director Brian Dempsey; yet no sooner had the pair ousted the dynasties than Dempsey fled the scene for reasons never satisfactorily explained.

McCann’s acolytes will no doubt point to Parkhead now being awash with cash following a hugely successful share issue. Yet the club’s current valuation in the City merely confirms that, for McCann, Celtic was an investment of the gilt-edged variety.

His reign has certainly been no exercise in philanthropy: bullish in the afterglow of last year’s Scottish Cup success, Tommy Burns urged the chairman through newspapers to accept the reality of the transfer market and speculate on players: the manager, though, was immediately slapped down and forced into a humiliating retraction.

And McCann, too, has repeatedly fallen foul of authority; his poaching of Kilmarnock’s management team brought a £100,000 fine; he erected a temporary stand, relieving supporters of a six-figure sum, without first applying for planning permission and building warrant; and most recently, McCann himself betrayed the Rioch brothers’ role in Alan Stubbs’ transfer by thanking the unlicensed agents effusively during the press conference.

Understandably, those transgressions caused widespread amusement amongst non-believers. But more offensive has been McCann’s constant dismissal of those he regards as subsidiary junkies. His commentary on Bosman continued, inevitably, in that vein: “I’d like to see this give a jolt to some clubs. They’ve got to get organized on business lines.”

And Celtic’s regeneration is, apparently, the template for all others. “It’s not a matter of complaining that Celtic and Rangers are too big,” he insisted. “Did anyone ask that question two years ago when Celtic almost went out of business? We had nothing two years ago.” Nothing, that is, except for 30,000 absent fans ready to support a winning team, many of them desperate to bankroll the new regime.

McCann has sought to soften his and Celtic’s image with various limp gestures: a campaign of ‘Bhoys Against Bigotry’ consisted of little more than players wearing printed T-shirts for a photocall. And just recently, he has taken to inviting groups of homeless to Celtic Park. All very laudable, but the venom McCann continually directs at Scotland’s smaller clubs marks him as an unlikely egalitarian.

And Scotland’s Glasgow-obsessed media is invariably receptive to McCann’s outpourings; throughout the pre-season, utopians such as David Platt, Ian Wright and Graeme Souness supplied quotes for the tabloids to foment nonsensical debate over whether Rangers and Celtic should quit Scotland for the English Premiership, and if so how they might fare.

But Fergus McCann is unlikely to be around when seismic change eventually occurs; he is already approaching the midpoint of a reign self-restricted to five years. So, should McCann keep his word, he is due to bid Scottish football farewell just before the millennium.

And then we’re gonna party like it’s 1999.

From WSC 116 October 1996. What was happening this month