Glasgow's White Knight (original) (raw)

Sports|Glasgow's White Knight

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/09/sports/IHT-glasgows-white-knight.html

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March 9, 1994

In many parts of the world, a quick way to take the pulse of a city is through its soccer loyalties. They are intense, they are tribal, and they often accurately indicate the well-being or otherwise of the community.

But in real football capitals - from Liverpool to Lisbon, Milan to Madrid, Budapest to Buenos Aires, Copenhagen to Cairo - it beats to two separate rhythms. The colors of "your" team come to display cultural, religious and geographic allegiances.

Nowhere is this more true than in Glasgow. Here you are either blue or green, Rangers or Celtic, Protestant or Catholic.

It has been that way for 106 years. But last weekend the pulse almost was arrested, or so we are led to believe. The Bank of Scotland threatened to

put Celtic into receivership, and the threat lasted 13 hours before an outsider came in to act as guarantor for £7 million ($10.5 million) in debts.

Fergus McCann, a Scot based in Canada, flew in to make the pledge, along with two local businessmen. In doing so, he brought the beginning of the end of a family fiefdom that had owned Celtic for twice McCann's 51 years.

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