Neil Lennon expressed his frustration with Celtic’s short recovery period ahead of our group stage match against Atletico Madrid tomorrow night. There should be another wonderful atmosphere beneath the lights as the Bhoys take on the La Liga team at Paradise. Lennon has lamented the lack of downtime his old squad has experienced, and Brendan Rodgers and his team will be hoping to score their first points of the season.
Due to Sky Sports Scotland’s scheduling, the Hoops had to fly to Edinburgh on Sunday to play Hearts at 2:15 pm, while our European opponents had the advantage of having an extra day to prepare for the big match because they played on Saturday night. Our contract with Sky Sports in Scottish football is starting to regularly feature the unjust demand that we always submit to their schedule.
Sky has no problem assisting English Premier League teams with timing their games so that they are not overextended in front of mid-week European matches, as Lennon noted on PLZ Soccer. “Celtic are playing on a Sunday afternoon when they have a Champions League game on the Wednesday night,” he stated on the channel. Why are Celtic playing on a Sunday afternoon but Atletico Madrid played on a Saturday night?
They will now only have Monday and Tuesday off before facing Atletico Madrid in a match. On Saturday night, Manchester United played, and I knew it was probably for TV. On Saturday night, Arsenal took the field at 5:30 p.m. On Saturday, Man City played, as did all of their Champions League teams. The Scottish team plays on Sunday after having had one less day to recover. It’s just beyond me.
It’s undeniable that Sky Sports treats Celtic and Scottish football in general as an afterthought, and their blatantly Anglo-centric view of British football is offensive.
It’s common practice to cut off coverage early and switch channels after games, and occasionally the absence of reliable coverage is also ridiculed. It certainly does beg the question of why we felt the need to give up our TV rights for a poke of beans years into the future, especially as there won’t be any television cameras present for this coming weekend’s match against Hibernian.
