The Glasgow Cup is a football tournament open to teams from Glasgow, Scotland. Operated by the Glasgow Football Association, it was competed for annually by senior Glasgow clubs from 1887 until 1989. It is now competed for between the senior teams of Clyde, Partick Thistle and Queen's Park and the youth teams of Celtic and Rangers, and has used both knockout and round robin formats to determine the finalists. The cup was dominated by the city's Old Firm rivals, Rangers and Celtic, who won the competition 44 times and 29 times respectively while it was a senior competition. Only five times did the final not feature either Rangers or Celtic. The advent of European football led to the Glasgow Cup becoming less valued, and the tournament did not take place at all or was not finished several times in its later years. Since it was reinstated for youth teams, Rangers have won a further 13 editions, ahead of Celtic with 11. The Glasgow Cup should not be confused with the Scottish Youth Cup, which is open to youth sections of clubs across Scotland since but has featured a Celtic v Rangers final nine times since its inception in 1983, often played within a few weeks of the Glasgow Cup final.
History
The Glasgow Football Association Cup was once seen as an important competition, on a par with the League or the Scottish Cup. It was contested by the senior clubs in the Glasgow area, with the winners receiving a globular silver trophy. The competition was dominated by the old rivals of Celtic and Rangers, but the others, Clyde, Partick Thistle, Queen's Park and the now defunct Third Lanark all enjoyed relative success. The competition's status diminished after World War II, with European competitions seeming more attractive and important, and the nationwide Scottish League Cup providing a new distraction for clubs and supporters and a rival for fixture dates. The competition was normally played early in the season, until 1960. After the demise of the similar Glasgow Merchants Charity Cup, the Glasgow Cup fixtures would be put in any available space with the final being played at the end of the season. After 1971 the Glasgow Cup was not played until it was re-introduced for the 1974-75 season, but it was generally seen as unappealing, and was even left incomplete on occasion; otherwise the final was often held over until the beginning of the following season. In the event of a Celtic v Rangers final, both would still usually put out full-strength first teams. This remained the case up to 1986 when a crowd of over 40,000 saw Rangers take the trophy with a 3-2 win over Scottish champions Celtic, courtesy of an Ally McCoist hat-trick, to give manager Graeme Souness his first trophy days after taking charge. After that, it essentially became a reserve team tournament. Rangers retained the trophy the following season in another old rivals final; only 15,000 were there to watch what were effectively two reserve teams. The following season's contest was never completed. Officially there were no suitable dates available to fit in ties; in reality, the competition had become irrelevant. In 1988 the competition was abandoned, and the final edition was played out in 1989 with Partick Thistle becoming the final winners of the competition in its original format. The Glasgow Cup was subsequently relaunched in 1990 as an Under-19 tournament competed for by the youth teams of Celtic, Clyde, Partick Thistle, Queen's Park and Rangers. It then became an Under-17 tournament in 2008, competed for by the same teams as previously. From the 2019 competition, the age limit was raised to Under-20, with several players involved in the Celtic v Rangers final that year having already featured for the clubs' senior teams in domestic and European competitions; the match itself, played at Celtic Park, did not involve any public ticket sales due to concerns regarding spectator disorder as had occurred in previous years. The format was changed again for 2020, with the Old Firm clubs now fielding under-21s plus two overage players, and the smaller clubs using their first teams with two trialists, in a home-and-away league basis followed by a final between the top two. In the opening round of fixtures, Clyde's 50-year-old manager Danny Lennon drew attention in the media when he brought himself on as a substitute in a win over Celtic's 'colts'.
