"Without fans who pay at the turnstile, football is nothing. Sometimes we are inclined to forget that."
To this day, that first sentence remains engraved on the base of the great Jock Stein statue outside Celtic Park. It is still as pertinent as ever. Arguably, it is more important to remember it now than ever before.
In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, when football was halted - stopped completely in some parts - and then resumed in front of empty stadia, with supporters unable to attend, that great proclamation returned to the fore. Without fans, football was a pale imitation of itself that no amount of fake crowd noise and every game being on TV could make up for.
