Ten years on: Dundee v Celtic and the league match in America that never happened

In the minds of Dundee’s Texan owners Tim Keyes and John Nelms, it was a bold and visionary plan which could enhance and widen the profile of the Premiership.

For much of the rest of Scottish football, including many within the Dens Park club’s own fanbase, it was an idea greeted by a combination of scepticism and downright derision.

Ten years ago this month, Keyes and Nelms revealed they had opened negotiations to host a future home league game against Celtic in the United States.

The Scottish champions were open to the concept in principle. Boston and Philadelphia, cities with an Irish heritage and diaspora Celtic were keen to tap into, were identified as potential venues.

‘The proposal is very much in its early stages and of course the relevant approvals would be sought from the SPFL Board at the appropriate time,’ Dundee stated.

‘As a club we are always looking to bring new ideas to the table and should this progress we firmly believe it will be a fantastic opportunity for Dundee, Celtic and Scottish Football as a whole.’

While world governing body FIFA warned it would be the final arbiter in determining whether the match could go ahead, even if both the Scottish FA and United States Soccer Federation gave it the green light, there was initial encouragement from the SPFL board who said they would consider the merits of the plan.

The story rumbled on into the 2016-17 season, when Dundee had pencilled in one of their scheduled Dens Park meetings with Celtic being relocated across the Atlantic.

In January 2017, however, Dundee confirmed the idea had been shelved. While no formal explanation was given, it was clear the amount of administrative hurdles it had to cross, both domestically and internationally, had simply been too problematic.

It had, in essence, met the same fate as the Premier League’s controversial ‘Game 39’ scheme which had first been mooted back in 2008 which envisaged an extra round of fixtures being played at various neutral venues outside of England.

Opposition from supporters’ groups and several Premier League club managers, even before the resistance of UEFA and FIFA could be tested, eventually saw it fall by the wayside.

Yet recent developments across European football suggest that Keyes and Nelms were perhaps not chasing a wildly unrealistic ambition after all.

As it stands, a Serie A fixture between AC Milan and Como is provisionally scheduled to take place at the Optus Stadium in Perth, Australia on February 8.

Despite its own ongoing opposition to the concept, UEFA last month ‘reluctantly’ approved the move as it found there is no legal framework to stop it.

Aleksander Ceferin, the UEFA president, added: ‘League matches should be played on home soil. Anything else would disenfranchise loyal match-going fans and potentially distort competitions.

‘This decision is exceptional and should not be seen as setting a precedent. Our commitment is clear — to protect the integrity of national leagues and ensure that football remains anchored in its home environment.’

If the Milan-Como match does go ahead in Australia, however, Ceferin’s words will surely be rendered redundant. A precedent will indeed have been set and there are no shortage of clubs across Europe who will look to follow it.

In Spain, La Liga bosses remain determined to find a way to promote their product abroad.

The same UEFA executive meeting which found it had no option but to allow Milan-Como to proceed had also rubber-stamped La Liga’s request to stage a fixture between Villarreal and Barcelona in Miami this December.

That provoked a major backlash throughout the Spanish football community, not just among supporters’ groups who are opposed to the idea. At every La Liga fixture on the weekend of October 18/19, players in all teams refused to move for the first 15 seconds after the referee’s whistle to start their games.

Acting on the advice of their union AFE, the co-ordinated action was in protest against the lack of any consultation with players about the impact and consequences of playing league matches abroad.

La Liga backed down and cancelled the Miami plan, although president Javier Tebas remains committed to finding a way to implement it in the future.

Like many other football administrators and executives across Europe, Tebas looks on with envy at the way American sports can spread their reach and commercial clout beyond their own borders.

The NFL have held regular season games abroad since 2007, the success of the project underlined again last month when a crowd of 86,152 packed Wembley to watch the Los Angeles Rams take on the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Likewise, the upcoming NBA meeting of Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies at the 02 Arena in London in January has already sold out.

For La Liga and Serie A, the desire to stage some of their fixtures in the USA, Australia and elsewhere is driven purely and simply by financial factors as they try to bridge the increasing gap between themselves and the clout of the Premier League.

Whether Scottish football could secure significant benefits from such a move is more questionable.

Dundee chairman Nelms confirmed last year that they may try again to test the water for moving a game to the States.

‘We’re in the entertainment business so anything we can do to entertain, we’d certainly do that,’ said Nelms.

‘That project nearly happened, it was very, very close. It would have been fantastic for everybody, financially for the football club, for the eyes that you’d get on the game, everything we thought that it would be fantastic for.

‘The NFL are doing it just now. They see the benefits in doing that.

‘There are an enormous amount of hoops. It’s FIFA, it’s UEFA and the local leagues. But if it ever arose again that we’re able to do that, we have a little bit more of an understanding of how it works now and we’d certainly be up for something like that.’

Scottish football has transplanted itself abroad in the past. Back in the close season of 1994, Guinness promoted a tournament in Hamilton, Ontario which featured Celtic, Hearts and Aberdeen along with Montreal Impact.

Hopes of attracting big crowds from the Canadian ex-pat community fell flat, however, with less than 6,000 turning up at the Ivor Wynne Stadium to watch Celtic beat the Dons in the final. The experiment was never repeated.

Celtic have played in front of much higher attendances in pre-season matches in the USA since the turn of the century, although that can be attributed to the standard of opponents they have faced such as in 2012 when over 40,000 turned up for a game against Real Madrid in Philadelphia.

With the best will in the world, it’s difficult to envisage the locals flocking to the Lincoln Financial Field in similar numbers to watch Dundee play Celtic.

The biggest selling point of the Scottish game, for good or ill, remains the Old Firm fixture which would have the greatest potential for attracting interest if it was ever staged abroad.

It almost happened three years ago, when Celtic and Rangers were scheduled to meet in the Sydney Cup tournament during the winter domestic break ahead of the World Cup finals in Qatar.

Despite contracts having been signed, Rangers pulled out in response to angry protests from their supporters who perceived their club as playing a secondary role to then Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou’s Australian homecoming.

Both Celtic and Rangers will certainly be keeping a close eye on whether the potentially ground-breaking Milan-Como game does go ahead down under in February.

Not all European leagues share the enthusiasm of Serie A and La Liga. Hans-Joachim Watzke, head of the Bundesliga and a former Borussia Dortmund chief executive, said recently: ‘As long as I am responsible for this league, there will be no competitive matches abroad — period.’

Yet there is an inescapable sense that the tide is turning on an idea regarded as fanciful when Dundee’s owners raised it 10 years ago. The genie of domestic league matches being played outside national borders is straining harder than ever to get out of the bottle. Once it does, there may be no going back.