UEFA counted hundreds of flags in the stands of Celtic Park and found them “provocative and offensive”.
The European Football Union inflicted a fine of 17,500 euros on the Celtic Glasgow because its supporters brandished Palestinian flags in the stands during the Champions League match on October 25, against Atlético de Madrid, UEFA announced on Wednesday, November 22, 2023.
The supporters had deployed banners with the message: “Free Palestine, victory for resistance”. Flags that UEFA found “provocative and offensive”.
For its part, the Glasgow club had decided to ban the group of responsible supporters, the Green Brigade, the group of ultra supporters formed in 2006, for an indefinite period at home and outside.
Celtic supporters had already brandished Palestinian flags in a match against Kilts in the league in early October.
Celtic supporters show sympathy with regard to the Palestinian cause because their ancestral history is, for the most part, similar.
The Celtic Football Club was founded in 1887 by brother Walfrid, a Catholic ecclesiastics, to generate income to feed Irish immigrants residing in Glasgow and to attenuate their poverty.
Celtic is the Catholic club of the East End of Glasgow, a home of the dispossessed, engaged in the eternal class struggle, and not only in Scotland. “The North Curve raises the Palestinian flag to show the world” that the club stands on the side of the oppressed and not oppressors, “the green brigade said in a press release on October 25.
And this is not the first time that Celtic fans have used the Champions League scene to express themselves on the conflict in the Middle East. In August 2016, Celtic played against the Israeli club Happoel Be’er Sheeva in front of the North curve, decorated with many Palestinian flags.
The green brigade had paid the fine of £ 16,000 from UEFA and donated additional £ 100,000 to social projects in Palestine.
The club has finally become a symbol of hope and a source of pride for the oppressed.
