Tomorrow we play the Danes in the Europa League, and one of their players in is the media allegedly saying we’re “the enemy” and he’s going to be looking to beat us for his fans at Ibrox.
What kind of talk is this? Is it really from a European opponent’s centre-back? Or is this an example of media manipulation and twisting someone’s words? Astonishingly, no. This is a real quote. And I have to ask; “what is it with some of these people? What planet do they live on? What parallel universe are they beaming in from?”
You know when I saw the headline in The Herald this morning, courtesy of Graeme McGarry—yes, that Graeme McGarry, who’s already featured on this site once today—my first thought was: surely not.
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The headline? “Kevin Mbabu to do it for Rangers against ‘enemy’ Celtic.”
Here’s the thing. I had no idea who that was. I had to look him up.
And when I did, I laughed. Because do you know how many games he played in an Ibrox shirt? Zero. None. Nada. Nil. Newcastle sent him up here on loan for a short spell. He’s one of the Ashley players. He never got near the first team. Ibrox fans probably don’t even remember him, and ours certainly wouldn’t have. I know I didn’t.
Then you read the comments, and it just gets more surreal:
“Yeah, of course it will be special because as a former (Ibrox) player, the fans … will expect me to beat the enemy, especially after what happened last weekend. So, of course, it will be a little bit special because I also still have a couple of friends in Scotland.
“I also have a former teammate that plays there, James Tavernier, who’s the captain over there. I haven’t talked to him yet. But I think I will maybe get a message in the next few hours or maybe tomorrow.
“So, I’ll definitely have to represent a little bit, maybe 1% (Ibrox) tomorrow, and do the best that I can to get the three points tomorrow with my teammates.”
One per cent? One?
That’s about a hundred times more than he ever gave when he was actually there. This guy had one of the shortest, most forgettable loan spells in recent memory. But here he is, giving it the full badge-thumping patter like he left the place a legend.
And the Tavernier bit? He “hasn’t talked to him yet” but reckons he might get a message. Right. Because Tavernier, who’s in the middle of a complete circus at the moment, has nothing more pressing to do than ping a WhatsApp to a bloke he passed in the corridor nine years ago. Give me strength.
But the really annoying thing isn’t even Mbabu. It’s the fact that this story exists at all. That this bizarre, embarrassing quote is in a Scottish paper because somebody asked the question. Some hack in a press scrum decided to ask a guy with no real connection to Ibrox if he planned to “do it” against Celtic for his former team.
Why? For a headline. For a wee nibble of clickbait. And in doing so, they served up this steaming bowl of nonsense.
“Celtic are the enemy,” he says. Based on what, exactly? Half-remembered stories?
Based on listening to the halfwits who still infect that club with their warped sense of persecution and identity? He walked through the doors of Ibrox a tourist, a loanee, and somehow walked out infected with that same twisted mindset.
And it is twisted. It’s the kind of poisoned language that festers. It’s the kind of rhetoric that leads to fans singing about being up to their knees in blood. This is the same sort of nonsense that feeds into the worst aspects of their culture, and we see it drip-fed, week after week, through press comments, interviews, and headlines like this.
If a Celtic player spoke like that—about any team—I’d be embarrassed. Deeply. We don’t talk like that. Certainly not about clubs that, frankly, don’t matter enough to warrant it. And we certainly wouldn’t tolerate it from someone who had never kicked a ball in our colours.
Can you imagine the reaction if someone we’d loaned out once piped up about some far-flung tie and said he was going to “represent Celtic and beat the enemy”?
Folk would rightly laugh at him.
Mbabu’s nonsense has the same energy as a guy turning up to a reunion and pretending he was head boy when nobody remembers his name. He gave nothing. He left no mark. But here he is, talking like he’s on a mission from God.
And again, I want to stress—this isn’t about him. It’s about the whole media ecosystem that gives this stuff oxygen. It’s about the Scottish sports media’s relentless hunt for faux controversy, for headlines that stir the pot even when there’s nothing in it. This isn’t journalism. This is theatre, and bad theatre at that.
Mbabu is just the latest to get sucked into it. He gave them a quote, and they turned it into a story. It’s almost impressive how something so pointless, so utterly irrelevant, became a talking point. Not that the comment itself is brazenly silly. Most of us wouldn’t have known he was even playing tomorrow. But now he’s in the headlines for pledging to give his mighty 1% for a club he never played for. It’s tragic. And hilarious.
Does it make me want Celtic to win the game more? Not even slightly. That desire is already at its maximum. Reading this nonsense doesn’t stoke the fire—it just confirms what we already know: the circus never ends over there, and the press will always be on hand to shine a light on the clowns.
And if anything, it gives me a grim sort of amusement. A grim satisfaction in watching how farcical it’s all become. It also reminds me that while they obsess over enemies and ghosts and historical grievances, we’re focused on what matters.
The game. The points. The performance.
Mbabu? He’s a footnote. A trivia question. But thanks to some desperate hack with a recorder and a deadline, he’s now the face of the latest non-story. And in doing so, he’s inadvertently shone a spotlight on the absurdity of the whole system. For that, we should probably thank him. I mean, we won’t.
But still … only in Scotland.
