L.A. Fans Can’t Avoid Celtics This Week--Even in Soccer

So you’re a frustrated Laker fan, are you? Figured you’d get the heck out of the country so you don’t have to watch those arrogant guys in green win themselves another banner. Go unwind someplace far, far away. Like say Scotland. Yeah, that’s it. Scotland.

Forget it.

Would you believe the top soccer team in Scotland’s Premier Division is named Celtic? There’s no getting away from those guys.

Except for the Dundee football club. After finishing sixth in the just-concluded Premier Division season, Dundee opens a 26-day, 10-game U.S. tour this weekend at Birmingham High’s Tom Bradley Stadium in Van Nuys. The Scotland team faces the brand-new Hollywood Kickers in the Kickers’ home opener.

Dundee should beat the Kickers and the other Western Soccer Alliance teams it will play on this tour. The Kickers are a semipro team, their players needing full-time jobs to supplement their small soccer salaries. Dundee consists of bona fide professionals who make a decent to excellent living kicking a ball. Players in the Premier Division earn anywhere from $18,000 to $50,000 a year, plus bonuses.

Soccer is the sport in much of the world, and that includes the city of Dundee, population 177,000. There are two teams in town, Dundee and Dundee United, and when they get together, it can make the Lakers and those other Celtics look like a pickup game at the company picnic.

Kids choose sides--Dundee or Dundee United--as soon as they can say the words and then dream about someday wearing the uniform of their team.

One such kid is Steven Campbell, an 18-year-old member of the traveling Dundee squad.

“Everybody wants to be a professional football player,” he said. “That’s everybody’s dream.”

Everybody’s dream in Dundee, that is, where professional football means soccer and nothing else. There is nothing else.

“Football is life for some people,” said Campbell, who is making his first trip to America. “I want to see Disneyland and Hollywood, but the most important thing is to win. As a young player, I’ll be watched to see if I can play with the boys.”

Much like American football, Scottish football recruits potential stars like Campbell, but a lot earlier.

It’s not uncommon for a Premier Division team to sign kids at age 13 to what is called a schoolboy contract. The youngsters then play in boys club competition, under the supervision of what would be an area scout in this country. The recruits are also periodically brought to soccer camps for further schooling in the sport.

Age 16 is often decision time. Either the recruits leave school to begin their professional careers with the club that signed them, or they go elsewhere if the team is not satisfied with their progress. If they stick, the teen-agers start with a youth team, then, if they’re good enough, they move up to the reserve team and, finally, the first team.

The problems experienced in America these days with big-time sports are not mirrored on the fields of Scotland. Drug controversies, exorbitant salary demands and guaranteed contracts are not big problems over there.

But one problem seems universal in sports--the need to win. Dundee has had four coaches, or rather managers, in the past decade.

The team is pleased with the man in charge now, Archie Knox. He seems to have turned things around with this year’s 14-15-7 record. That may not seem overly impressive, but it’s an improvement over recent years.

All of Dundee’s games are played within an 80-mile radius and bus travel is the only mode of transportation.

The team is averaging 8,600 fans in a stadium with a capacity of 23,500. Ticket prices range from $4.50 to $7.50. But no matter what the average attendance or ticket price, there’ll be a team in Dundee as long as soccer is played. The club has been there since 1889. No franchise hopping there, no moving vans pulling out in the middle of the night. The club is as much a part of the town and the way of life as a Dundee school or church.

And if Dundee doesn’t beat Celtic next year or the year after, no matter. The team’s got centuries to catch them.