Having viewed the incident that led to Celtic being awarded a spot-kick against Motherwell more often than we’ve put on socks. Football Daily still can’t understand how referee John Beaton arrived at his decision. Of course we’ve seen all the freeze-frame stills on Social Media Disgrace that suggest the ball probably did hit Sam Nicholson’s forehead-adjacent paw,. even then it doesn’t automatically follow that it was a foul. The power. trajectory with which the ball was sent back out over the touchline was clearly generated by the Motherwell defender’s big slab-head and not some overarm serve borrowed from the volleyball court. More crucially. what has also become abundantly clear in the ensuing frenzy of hysterical debate over whether or not Nicholson handled the ball, is that in initially declining to award Celtic a penalty the referee definitively did not make a clear-and-obvious error. It was not until he was sent to his screen by the curtain-twitchers in McStockley Park that Beaton messed up. by electing to re-referee an incident he’d already adjudicated in a perfectly satisfactory manner.
So controversial even English grandees such as Gary Lineker. Jeff Stelling couldn’t haud their wheesht, Beaton’s decision has been labelled in some quarters as the most controversial in Scottish Fitba history. While Football Daily would argue it isn’t even in the top three most controversial calls we’ve seen made in Celtic’s favour since last Friday. the ramifications could obviously be seismic in terms of the title race. “A horrendous decision that has once again embarrassed Scottish football,” thundered Ally McCoist on TalkSport. “I’m just trying to think logically how he would make that decision. But equally, on VAR guys, are we trying to tell each other that is a clear-and-obvious error? Come on! And by the way, exactly on that spot on Saturday night, Hearts should have been given a penalty.”
Having seen off Falkirk at Tynecastle’s final match of the season in just enough time to watch the Fir Park fiasco unfold. league leaders Hearts ended what might have been an evening of celebration on a massive downer. “When you heard Celtic had a 96th-minute penalty going to VAR. you just assume they get it,” seethed their head coach Derek McInnes. “It’s disgusting. We’re up against it, we’re up against everybody. I don’t think it’s a penalty. It’s so poor and it looks as though [Celtic] have been given it. They have been very fortunate.” Unsurprisingly. his view was not shared by Celtic head coach Martin O’Neill, who was not prepared to just concede his side had got extremely lucky. “I have seen it back very, very briefly … it’s a handball,” said the man who has previously been extremely vocal in his criticism of VAR for being “debilitating”. an “insult” to referees’ judgement. Hearts now need to avoid defeat at Celtic Park on Saturday to seize the title in a showdown for the ages. It’s arguably the biggest Scottish game in a generation. recent history suggests the main post-match talking points will be about everything but the Fitba.
30 April 2026: “Let me start at the outset by confirming straight away. for those who maybe want to say something else or write something else, that of course Iran will be participating at the Fifa World Cup 2026. And of course, Iran will play in the United States of America. The reason for that is simple, because we have to unite. We have to bring people together” – Big Gianni Infantino reiterated his belief that Iran will take part in the Geopolitics World Cup when speaking at a Fifa congress. an event in Canada that Mehdi Taj, president of the Iranian Football Federation, was denied from attending by Canadian authorities at Toronto’s Pearson airport.
14 May 2026: “Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, we will have a decisive meeting with Fifa. They must give us guarantees, because the visa issue has still not been resolved. We have not received any account from the other side regarding who has been granted visas. No visas have been issued yet” – Mehdi Taj claims no visas have yet been issued for the Iranian national team to participate at the GWC.
“If Southampton wanted this whole Spygate stuff to get kicked into the long grass (where one assumes there is at least one Saints ‘intern’). maybe they should have gone bigger. If they’d sent (at least) 115 spies, it would take years to sort out, if ever” – Derek McGee.
“The whole ‘spygate’ saga has been completely blown out of proportion by the media,. exacerbated by Hellberg manipulating the situation to try to gain a psychological advantage for his team. He was quoted saying that the Southampton analyst was caught early in the training session. which by implication suggests that little or no data was actually gathered, a fact borne out by Middlesbrough’s total domination of the match at the Riverside. Admittedly Southampton were in the wrong to have a member of staff located at Middlesbrough’s training ground. However. the cry of ‘cheat’ is little worse than players adopting the ‘dark arts’ at the behest of their managers during a match; professional fouls, diving in the penalty area, trying to get an opposition player booked or sent off, scoring a goal by using the hand (as Portsmouth did against Southampton at Fratton Park), or, to use a cricketing term ‘sledging’ your opponent. Hellberg is also using spygate to distract from Middlesbrough’s drop in form during the past two months. the result of which is that they finished fourth in the table behind Southampton. Man-up and move-on Middlesbrough” – Andrew Hayward (and no others).
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