Celtic are it again. According to manager, Ronny Delia, the only reason Celtic lose in Europe is the lack of competition they get at home. Delia might have a point. When even their closest rivals put up all the resistance of a Spring breeze how can Celtic be expected to beat the sixth best team in Norway? It’s just not fair!
However, I have the answer. A suggestion to make Celtic better – if they don’t get a challenge from playing Aberdeen OR Hearts then maybe they’ll get a challenge if they play Aberdeen AND Hearts – at the same time.
That’s crazy, you say, Celtic can’t play two teams at once, that’s not how football works. That’s true – but only if you’re talking about association football. It’s time for radical action, it’s time for Celtic to face real competition, it’s time to embrace three-sided football.
What’s three sided football?
Three-sided football is exactly that – three sides playing football at the same time. No longer will we have the monotony of Celtic v Dundee on a wet Wednesday night in March. The fixture list will instead be filled with the much more exciting Celtic v Dundee v Dundee United.
Is this a joke?
No. Three sided football was invented in the 1960s by a Danish artist and writer, Asger John. John believed that traditional football was based on a simple view of the world. Football was ‘us v. them’. He wanted a game that showed the world was more complicated. You need trust, cooperation, teamwork and betrayal. Three-sided football was his attempt to show that football could reflect his philosophy. As he said:
“[Three sided football] deconstructs the mythic bi-polar structure of conventional football, where an us-and-them struggle mediated by the referee mimics the way the media and the state pose themselves as “neutral” elements in the class struggle”.
In short, Asger John was a bit of a dick. Football didn’t need fixed. But, fix it he did. I bet he also took pleasure in telling small children that Santa’s not real or that they look more like the Postman their their Daddy. Yet, despite his inability to just let things be, his idea may yet save Scottish football.
How do you play three-sided football?
That’s a very good question because… err… three sided football doesn’t actually have any rules. Or a ref. Just a pitch. The teams play on a hexagonal pitch but everything else is up in the air. The three teams have to agree tween them what the rules will be before they play. This is a game where cooperation and negotiation starts before a ball is even kicked. That’s if you use a ball. You don’t have to. It’s your rules. You could kick a grapefruit if you want. It’s up to you. You grapefruit kicking weirdo.
C’mon, you can’t be serious, there must be rules?
There are no rules but in the 1990s, a number of rules were suggested to help teams get started. It can be hard to organise a kick around in the park when no one knows what they’re doing and whether they need to stop off at the grocers on the way there.
The general rules are:
- A team doesn’t count the goals it scores, only the goals it concedes. The winner is the team that concedes the fewest goals.
- There are no halfs. Instead the team play three periods of 30 minutes.
- Each team has five players with rolling subs.
- Don’t kill anyone. This should be obvious but, if you don’t include it, you have three sided Sunday league football.
And that’s it.
How does it work?
As you play each team tries to form alliances with the others. However, tense alliances could change at any time. At one moment, Dundee and Dundee United could gang up on Celtic. The next, Dundee United have stabbed their allies in the back by turning and running at Dundee’s undefended goal.
You can see it illustrated here in this BBC report.
This sounds, brilliant, how will it save Scottish football?
I could say that it’ll create greater competition. That so called “diddy teams” can join together to beat Celtic as 22 take on 10 (we’d say 11 but we all know Efe Ambrose doesn’t count as a proper footballer).
I could say that any system that encourages Scottish football to co-operate rather than pursuing their own selfish interest can only be an improvement on the SPFL. However, I recommend it for one very simple reason – it would shut Ronny Delia the hell up. Lack of competition, my arse. Lack of competition didn’t make you buy Dedryck Boyata!
He’s a part-time comedian and in 2014, he supported Eddie Izzard in ‘Please Don’t Go’, Izzard’s show about Scottish independence and worked with BBC Radio Scotland as a weekly guest on Referendum Tonight.
