Scottish football's extraordinary final was good for the game - and that's not being anti-Celtic

Football fans being essentially selfish, and rightly so, it wasn’t quite as straightforward as knowing everyone bar Celtic fans welcomed what unfolded in Saturday’s Scottish Cup final.

Hibs fans may well have felt some anguish, despite the uplifting way their season ended. The Dundee United media team, meanwhile, made a mental note to refrain from posting anything that could potentially come back to haunt them.

Both teams had their European plans negatively affected by the surprise outcome. It was possible to feel sympathy for whoever holds the key to the Tannadice club’s X account, given few felt the need to point out that it was jumping the gun a bit when he or she posted, following the 2-1 win over Aberdeen, that United were now set fair for the Europa League. Reader: they weren’t.

Aberdeen captain Graeme Shinnie shows off the Scottish Cup to the Aberdeen fans. | SNS Group

Downgraded to the Conference League qualifiers due to Aberdeen’s unlikely Scottish Cup win, it’s nevertheless hard to imagine United fans being overly exercised by their north-east rivals’ success. What a season United enjoyed in any case. The same applies to Hibs fans, though they were more materially affected when the guarantee of group stage European football was plucked from their grasp as Dimitar Mitov leapt to his right to block Alistair Johnston’s penalty.

The stop heard all around the world? Maybe not quite, but what a shot in the arm for Scottish football. We can surely say that without being accused of being anti-Celtic or too pro-Aberdeen. No one should feel the need to apologise for enjoying an unexpected twist and sharing in the delight of over 20,000 Aberdeen supporters in the ground and many multiples more watching elsewhere. To say they simply 'enjoyed it' would be seriously downplaying the surge in dopamine levels.

Much was made earlier this month of the 40th anniversary of the last time Aberdeen won the Scottish title, which also meant it was 40 years since anyone outside of Rangers and Celtic had won it. While it was an anniversary worth noting, it was also a grim one. Had Celtic lifted the Scottish Cup on Saturday, it would have marked another milestone: the equal longest run in which a non-Old Firm club had failed to land a domestic trophy since between 1998 and 2004.

It can still get dull

Of course, Celtic have been doing most of the ‘heavy lifting’ in that regard – indeed, they have won 21 out of the last 27 trophies. They have lost just five out of their last 29 cup finals. It’s less an Old Firm thing, more a Celtic thing. But whether a case of two teams dominating or just one, it can still get a bit….dull.

After seventy odd minutes on Saturday, the Scottish Cup final looked set to go the way of two other national cup finals played on the same day. In France, Paris Saint-Germain swept Reims aside. In Germany, the romance was in third tier Arminia Bielefeld simply getting to that stage; the lower league side lost 4-2 to Stuttgart having trailed 3-0 at half-time.

It was expected to be a very similar story at Hampden. At around 2.30pm, Aberdeen fans had one last long gulp of whatever they were drinking to fortify them before taking one long deep breath: it was time to head to the stadium. There was little cup final tingle to speak of.

Aberdeen's player rush away to celebrate the victory. | SNS Group

Little that occurred in the opening 45 minutes had caused anyone to reconsider pre-match predictions. Although they could probably have done with another goal, Celtic had this sewn up. History awaited Brendan Rodgers, who was bidding to be the first Parkhead manager to win three trebles. It made what unfolded more extraordinary.

Inch by inch, minute by minute, almost imperceptibly, there was a change in direction. Momentum began to shift. Not in a blink of an eye. It was more of a slow, creeping realisation that actually, it’s possible we might have a shock on our hands here.

It wasn’t just one moment. Rather, it was several small moments, most of them not deemed significant enough to be included in a match correspondent’s copy but which, looking back, saw the match slowly tilt away from Celtic and towards Aberdeen. As I scrawled in a notepad, a Leighton Clarkson free kick after 50 minutes “at least gave Kasper Schmeichel something to do”. Arne Engels then hit the post after 64 mins. A Celtic second was surely imminent, or was it? Then came the triple substitution that some Celtic fans contend made them fatally weaker.

Case of triple substitutions

Nicolas Kuhn, Adam Idah and Engels departed to be replaced by James Forrest, Yang Hyun-Jun and Luke McCowan. Two minutes later Liam Scales almost deflected an Alexander Jensen cross into his own net. And then, with 15 minutes left, Aberdeen made a triple substitution of their own. It was a triple substitution with a difference. Three players came on and four initially went off, something I referenced with !!! in my pad.

Ante Palaversa was re-directed back on, which is just as well seeing as he slotted home Aberdeen’s fourth and last kick in the shootout. Jimmy Thelin later explained the mix-up as a few of us stood with him in the bowels of Hampden. It was, the Aberdeen manager suggested, due to his assistant Chrisster Persson’s bad handwriting: “It was a confusing moment,” he admitted. “But it was good that we survived that one.”

He could say that again. Imagine had Aberdeen slumped to defeat having barely tested Schmeichel all afternoon. What is now an amusing side-issue would have been identified as a farce and treated as further evidence of the Swede not being up to the job.

Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack. | SNS Group

In actual fact, the delay as referee Don Robertson sought to ensure it was still 11 v 11 helped to further take the sting out of the game. Aberdeen equalised minutes later thanks to a very fortunate own goal after a rare foray upfield.

Maybe it was Persson writing the script since it was hard to make any sense of it, although what I do know now is that Saturday takes its place near the top of unforgettable moments writing about Scottish football. And it perhaps even edges out Hibs winning the Scottish Cup in 2016 by dint of being so utterly unexpected.