The behavior of two asshole fans threatened to ruin the spectacle of yesterday’s Scottish Premiership match between rivals Hearts and Hibernian. One of the assholes punched Hearts’ keeper in the face in the middle of the match, and the other chucked a coin at Hibs’ manager, striking the coach square in the face.
The atmosphere surrounding this Edinburgh derby was testy all night long, as would be expected from a rivalry this fierce. Things boiled over from acceptably heated to completely inappropriate a little over an hour into proceedings, when Hearts keeper Zdeněk Zlámal walked over to the stands to retrieve a ball and was punched in the face by a Hibs fan.
The fan violence didn’t end there. In stoppage time at the end of the match, with the score tied at 0-0, Hearts seemed to score what would’ve certainly been the winning goal. However, the referee ruled the goal out an account of an offside call. While some of the crowd still cheered for the goal they hadn’t yet realized had been annulled, Hibs manager Neil Lennon turned to face the crowd and trolled them, grinning and gesticulating about the referee decision and at one point gesturing the fans to sit back down. As he still faced the crowd on the sideline, somebody hurled a coin at him and it struck Lennon in the face.
This video shows both incidents:
After the match, Lennon was predictably upset. “I am furious about it, to be honest,” he said, according to the BBC. “It’s unsavoury to say the least. It’s unacceptable.” Lennon went on to dismiss the notion that he was at fault for instigating the incident with his behavior after the goal was disallowed, explaining that “I was just giving a bit back for the abuse I was taking for 90 minutes.” Though his face might’ve been injured from the coin, his sense of humor was still in tact:
“The guy must have a few quid because it was a pound coin. I would like to meet the individual who threw the coin some day, because I am not happy about it at all.
“It stung me; it is quite sore. I don’t know where he has thrown it from, but it is a good shot. He might get in the World Matchplay [darts] next year.”
Lennon has a history with Hearts fans. When he was Celtic’s manager back in 2011, another Hearts fan ran onto the pitch during a match and attacked him:
Zlámal tweeted his feelings after the match, and confirmed that the clash between him and the fan during the match was a punch:
This goes to show that just because there is a phrase that appears to say otherwise, not every Scot is great.
[BBC]