Why Celtic have banned the Green Brigade from attending their matches.

 

 

There was a corner of Celtic Park that was a little quieter than usual on Wednesday evening. The occasion was a Scottish Premiership game between St Mirren and their hosts, Celtic, one of the most successful club teams in world football, with more than 100 trophies to their name and a fanbase that spans the globe.

Normally, the section between the North Stand and Lisbon Lions Stand — the latter a nod to the club’s most famous side, which won the 1967 European Cup in Portugal — would have been filled by the Green Brigade, a fans’ collective formed in 2006.

But on Tuesday the Scottish club announced that the season tickets of anyone who belonged to that group — around 250 people — had been suspended for the foreseeable future. This was, the club said, because of an “increasingly serious escalation in unacceptable behaviours and non-compliance with applicable regulations.”

The immediate assumption was that this action relates to the continued display of Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian banners at Celtic Park. The Green Brigade have long made their support for the Palestinian cause clear, something that they have continued in recent weeks as the situation in Gaza has developed.

Particular attention has been paid to the game on October 7, when Celtic faced Kilmarnock at home, hours after the Hamas attacks in Israel. At that game, the Green Brigade displayed two large banners that read ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Victory to the Resistance’.

The club condemned this action, stating: “Celtic is a football club and not a political organisation.” Nir Bitton, an Israeli midfielder who played for the club between 2013 and 2022, criticised those fans for being “brainwashed” and for having “zero clue about this conflict and you still act like you know everything.”