Dundee Attract Plaudits, and Critics In Scotland
Social media is a funny thing—except when it’s not. Take the curious case of Dundee, which clinched a place in the top six of the Scottish Premiership with a 0-0 draw against Aberdeen at Pittodrie on Saturday.
Dundee players—rightly—celebrated the result, and the accomplishment, with traveling supporters in the stands. Yet, when images and video of said celebrations went viral, a segment of the social media cognoscenti went berserk, ripping the players and the club and its supporters for “acting like they won the league” (in the words of at least one commenter).
The Full Scottish
For those of you who don’t follow Scottish football closely (and shame on you), this is a club that was in the Championship (or second division last term). That means, in their first season back in the top flight, Dundee not only avoided relegation concerns, they finished in the top half of the table with a real chance at European football. Celebrate away, we say.
As an aside, the club also get, as a result of their place in the standings, potentially lucrative home matches against Celtic and Hearts before the end of the season. For a club struggling to maintain its ground, this is worthy of a party.
Even Rangers manager Philippe Clement, whose club has much larger ambitions (more on that in a second), didn’t see the fuss.
“If people start to criticize because a team is celebrating something it’s because they don’t know how hard everybody works to achieve things,” he told the press. “So, of course, they celebrated to get top six. I think it’s a huge achievement and they did something special. It is only people who don’t understand this job that the manager, the players and everybody around the players is doing who can criticize that, I think.”
Sadly, for Clement anyway, Dundee had more cause to celebrate mid-week when they held the Belgian’s ’Gers side to, yet another, 0-0 draw at Dens Park. The result meant that Clement’s team has dropped points in consecutive matches following their thrilling 3-3 draw against Celtic. That run of form places them three points behind their rivals, the Hoops, with five matches to go for both sides, including the derby match at Celtic Park on May 11th.
There may be celebrations that day as well.