Medina? Ahly? Kilmarnock? Celtic?

I'm about ready to give up on bloody Medina. I'm all for supporting the underdog, but I can't find a fellow supporter, or even a shop that'll sell their shirt. So maybe I should be more pragmatic and follow Ahly next season. Most of my students do, so someone could take me to a match. And the sports shops have their gear.

Likewise, the SPL has been getting my attention. For all sorts of reasons which I won't go into now, we're moving our UK home from Tyneside to Ayrshire in the next few months. I had thought of following Kilmarnock, a local bus ride away. But their gates are around the 5000 mark, and they struggled this season. Whereas Celtic Park is less than an hour away, and regularly fills it's 60, 000 capacity. They usually qualify for the Champions League, so you get to see some serious European football, even though they don't usually get very far.

I've gotten a heads up because the SPL is coming to a very close finish tonight.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Celtic and Ahly have the same colours. Neither is the team of the Establishment.

And another thing that intrigues me. The Tripoli football teams that I know of were all establishd during the British occupation of Libya. It would be reasonable to surmise that this was done by British servicemen.

I wonder if Ahly with their strips were set up by Celtic fans? And Medina by Geordies? And Ittihad with their red and white by Sunderland or Man Utd supporters? And is that embryonic period of Libyan football lost to history? People here tend not to live to a ripe old age, and it's unlikely that many of the Libyan participants in setting up the clubs are still around.

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