Chiefs at the SPFL are calling for lifetime bans and for the police to track down the “idiotic” Ibrox coin thrower after Celtic star Arne Engels was struck during an Old Firm clash on Thursday.
The football body released a statement following the scenes in the final minutes of Rangers’ 3-0 over their bitter rivals at Ibrox after the Celtic star was struck by a missile when attempting to take a corner.
Match ref Don Robertson appeared to pick up several coins from the sidelines and Parkhead boss Brendan Rodgers confirmed Engles was struck ‘an inch away’ from his eye, the Record reports.
Rangers have also released a statement condemning the incident, and have pledged to support Police Scotland in their investigations. Police Scotland have confirmed that “enquiries are ongoing” into the incident.
An SPFL spokesperson said: “This behaviour is completely unacceptable, and we fully support any steps taken to identify those responsible for such idiotic, criminal acts.
“The dangers of so-called supporters throwing such items onto the pitch are obvious and anyone found guilty of such disgraceful conduct must be dealt with severely by the courts, including the imposition of football banning orders.
“We await the match delegate’s report, and we would urge any fans with relevant information to contact Police Scotland.”
A Celtic spokesperson said: “We understand that Police Scotland are currently investigating two separate incidents. The repeated targeting of our players and staff with missiles is quite appalling and completely unacceptable.”
Last month, SFA president Mike Mulraney called for similar life long punishments to be dished out to anyone caught with pyrotechnics inside Scotland’s stadiums – just days after the kick-off to the Old Firm’s league cup final had to be delayed because of smoke bombs in the stands.
Mulraney said: There’s one critical thing we have to remember – it’s a crime. Everybody is losing focus on the fact that it is a crime and that we have legislation to deal with it being a crime.
“It doesn’t matter how much the chief executive of the SFA or a club says, ‘Please don’t do that!’. It’s self-evident that these messages are having no impact. What does have an impact is if you use the tools that are currently afforded to us. We have a piece of legislation which allows for football banning orders.
“We need to ban them out of our game. They are criminals, they are not fans. They might call themselves fans but they are criminals. Last year we had one football banning order. One! I’m getting asked, ‘What are you doing about it?’. And I’m saying, ‘We will work with anybody to have a positive impact on society and to make sure people are safe,’. But we need the football banning orders to be embraced as the tool that’s currently available to actually ban these people and make it a criminal offence for them to come into our grounds. We’ve only had one in the last year.
“The police are the specialists and we cannot second guess them on how to do their job. But what we can question – not the police or the courts or the government but everybody together – is why are we not banning them?
“There were 43 banning orders two years ago. Then it went down to 20. And then, in this last year, there was one banning order.
“I think it’s reasonable for us to say, ‘Maybe we should be using that tool that’s at our disposal as a society, if we are all going to work together,’. We can say to them, ‘Please can you ban this person? You’ve arrested them, can you ban them? Please!’.”
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