In his latest autobiography, A Life In Football, Ian Wright has spoken about his (brief) spell in Scotland as a Celtic player. It's apparent that Wright is not be too thankful of John Barnes for bringing him North of the English border judging by his criticism of the Old Firm derby fixture.
Within the book, he writes;
"This wasn’t football, listening to songs being sung from the start to the finish of the game saying ‘F*** the Pope and the IRA’, or you’re in your car and people start banging on the roof shouting ‘No retreat! No surrender!’ At first, I didn’t even know what they were talking about...Fans love to talk about it like it’s this unbelievable thing! It’s not an unbelievable thing: it’s a nasty, tense, unsporting environment of super-intense religious bigotry that’s nothing to do with sport.”
On Twitter, Kilmarnock supporter, Jamie McDougall offers complete support for Wright's opinion.
Fair play Ian Wright. That's the best description of the Old Firm Derby I've ever seen. @craigfowler86 pic.twitter.com/pVziShjo2a
— Jamie McDougall (@Jamie_McDougall) September 27, 2016
Wright is reiterating a point made in 2000, shortly after dismissal of Barnes following a string of underwhelming results. At the time he considered it a hostile environment to play in and made the somewhat drastic comparison of how playing for Celtic felt like he was "caught up in a war crisis in Kosovo".
While Wright holds both supporters accountable for the bigotry that seems to come to surface during an Old Firm fixture, he considers the Scottish media to be quite biased;
"The press up there seemed to be very pro-Rangers, too, so journalists had so much fun ridiculing me and my so-called lack of form up there."
His autobiography A Life In Football is on sale now
