The Old Firm: the history and numbers behind Celtic vs Rangers

In more than 130 years of history, Celtic and Rangers have played each other 453 times in major competitions. The record is one of the most balanced in world football: 173 wins for Rangers, 172 for Celtic and 108 draws. But behind that round number sits a rivalry that was never just about football: for decades, the two Glasgow clubs stood on opposite sides of a religious and political divide that ran through the whole of Scotland.

The origin: two communities, two clubs

Celtic were founded on 6 November 1887, at a meeting in St Mary's church hall in Glasgow, called by the Irish Marist Brother Walfrid. The stated purpose was to raise money to relieve poverty in the city's Irish Catholic community, through the charity Walfrid already ran, the Poor Children's Dinner Table.

Rangers are older: the club was founded in March 1872, when four teenagers, brothers Moses and Peter McNeil, Peter Campbell and William McBeath, were walking through West End Park, today's Kelvingrove Park, and decided to start a football club.

The two sides first met in May 1888, in a friendly won 5-2 by Celtic. The exact origin of the nickname Old Firm remains uncertain to this day: one theory ties it to a remark that the two teams looked like "two old, firm friends"; another to an 1904 cartoon in a Scottish newspaper advertising "Patronise The Old Firm: Rangers, Celtic Ltd". A third theory notes that both clubs were among the eleven founders of the Scottish Football League in 1890.

The full head-to-head record

Of the 453 games, 343 came in the Scottish league (119 Celtic wins, 130 Rangers, 94 draws), 56 in the Scottish Cup (27 Celtic, 18 Rangers, 11 draws) and 54 in the League Cup (26 Celtic, 25 Rangers, 3 draws).

The biggest rout in derby history was Celtic 7-1 Rangers, in the Scottish League Cup final of 19 October 1957. Rangers also have two 5-0 wins over Celtic, both in the 1893-94 season: on 2 September 1893 and on 1 January 1894, both in the Scottish league. Celtic later matched that same scoreline on two occasions: 5-0 in the 1925 Scottish Cup and 5-0 in the 2018 Premiership.

The two biggest crowds in derby history also sit in the record books of Scottish football: 118,567 people watched a Rangers vs Celtic match at Ibrox Park on 2 January 1939, a British record for a league game. At Celtic Park, the official record is 83,500, on 1 January 1938, though some sources have since revised that figure upward to 92,000, citing fans locked out for safety reasons.

Titles: the two biggest numbers in Scottish football

Celtic hold 56 Scottish league titles, a record for the competition, most recently in 2025-26. Rangers follow close behind with 55. Rangers were once the first club in the world to win more than fifty national league titles, a world record that today belongs to Linfield, of Northern Ireland, with 57, not to Celtic.

Celtic's 2024-25 campaign illustrates the recent dominance: the team closed it out with a 5-0 win over Dundee United, sealing a fourth straight title, their 13th in 14 seasons.

Each side's single European trophy

Celtic hold one European Cup, won on 25 May 1967, beating Inter Milan 2-1 at the Estádio Nacional in Lisbon, under manager Jock Stein. Every starting player that day had been born within 30 miles of Glasgow, the squad became known as the "Lisbon Lions". It remains the club's only European title to this day. Celtic reached one other continental final, the 2003 UEFA Cup, but lost.

Rangers hold one European Cup Winners' Cup, won on 24 May 1972, beating Dynamo Moscow 3-2 at the Camp Nou in Barcelona, with a goal from Colin Stein and two from Willie Johnston. It also remains the club's only European trophy to this day.

The rivalry that split communities

Rangers' support has historically come from Scotland's Protestant community; Celtic's from families of Irish Catholic background, though Celtic never excluded Protestant players, and has always fielded many of them. In the stands, the difference shows in the flags: Celtic fans tend to wave the Irish tricolour, Rangers fans the British Union Jack. The rivalry, in the derby's own encyclopedic description, "has reflected and contributed to political, social and religious division and sectarianism in Scotland".

That divide had an institutional chapter: from the end of the First World War until the late 1980s, Rangers kept an unwritten policy of never signing an openly Catholic player. The practice hardened after 1912, when Protestant workers from the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast arrived in Glasgow and strengthened the club's ties to unionist loyalism. In 1967, the club's then vice-chairman publicly described Rangers as "formed in 1873 as a Protestant boys club", getting the club's own founding year wrong by a year.

The policy only ended in the summer of 1989, when Rangers announced the signing of Maurice "Mo" Johnston, a former Celtic player and openly Catholic, who had just agreed to return to the green-and-white side from Nantes, in France. It was Rangers' first signing of an openly Catholic player since the policy began. The reaction was immediate, and it came from more than just an ordinary fan: the general secretary of the Rangers Supporters Association, David Miller, told the press it was "a sad day for Rangers" and that he didn't want "to see a Roman Catholic at Ibrox".

Players who crossed the divide

Precisely because of that history, switching sides in the Old Firm has always been rare. Since the Second World War, only five players have worn both shirts at professional level: Alfie Conn (Rangers to Celtic, in 1977), Mo Johnston himself (Celtic to Rangers, in 1989), Steven Pressley, Mark Brown and Kenny Miller. Miller is the only modern-era player to cross the divide twice, first to Celtic, then back to Rangers, a feat only ever managed once before, by Tom Dunbar, back in the 19th century.

Before the Second World War, player movement between the two clubs was more common, with names such as Dunbar himself and Alec Bennett, who played for Celtic between 1903 and 1908 before moving to Rangers.

The derby's top scorers

The all-time top scorer in the fixture is Ally McCoist, of Rangers, with 27 goals in 55 games. Just behind him is another Rangers name from the early 20th century, Robert Hamilton, with 24 goals in 46 matches. On the Celtic side, the top scorers come from another era: Jimmy McGrory (22 goals in 35 games) and Sandy McMahon (22 in 43). In more recent times, Sweden's Henrik Larsson has 15 goals in 30 games for Celtic in the derby.

The 1971 tragedy

The darkest moment in the rivalry came on 2 January 1971, at the end of an Old Firm match at Ibrox Park. As fans tried to leave the ground via Stairway 13, a fatal crush killed 66 people and injured more than 200. It is the worst tragedy in Scottish football history, and distinct from an earlier disaster at the same ground, in 1902, when a stand collapse killed 25 people during a Scotland vs England international, unrelated to the derby.

The law written for the derby

In response to decades of sectarian tension tied to the Old Firm, the Scottish Parliament passed the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, receiving royal assent on 19 January 2012 and taking effect from 1 March that year. The derby's own encyclopedic account acknowledges the law "was designed specifically to target the Old Firm rivalry by reducing the religious hatred between the two opposing sides".

The legislation did not last: it was repealed on 19 April 2018, after a bill from Labour MSP James Kelly, who described the original law as having "completely failed to tackle sectarianism" and called it "illiberal", saying it "unfairly targets football fans". Historian Tom Devine was even harsher, calling it "the most illiberal and counterproductive act passed by our young Parliament to date" and "a stain on the reputation of the Scottish legal system for fair dealing".

Rangers' collapse and comeback

In 2012, Rangers entered administration after failing to reach an agreement with creditors. The rest of Scottish football refused to let the new company that took over the club inherit its place in the top flight, and the reformed Rangers were forced to restart in Scotland's fourth tier for the 2012-13 season, the first time in the club's history at that level.

The response on the pitch was swift: Rangers won the fourth-tier title in that very first season and strung together three promotions in four years, only returning to the Scottish Premiership, the top flight, for the 2016-17 season.

The money today

The financial gap between Glasgow's two sides has also changed hands. In the financial year to June 2025, Celtic's revenue was £143.6 million against Rangers' £94.1 million, a gap of roughly £49.5 million a year in the green-and-white side's favour. In the same period, Rangers posted a £14.8 million loss, the worst financial result in Scottish football.

In the summer 2025 transfer window, Rangers' gross spending was almost double Celtic's, £25.8 million against £13.2 million, but the net picture flips: Rangers closed the window with £2.6 million in net spending, the highest in Scotland, while Celtic posted £13 million in net sales.

It is that combination, a head-to-head record split almost down the middle, a Scottish title record that has changed hands, a single European trophy on each side, and a social wound that football did not create but also failed to heal, that makes the Old Firm one of the most studied derbies in the world, far beyond the result of any single match.