THE anger, disappointment and frustration which Scotland’s players felt at the end of their defeat to Spain in a Euro 2024 qualifier in Seville late on Thursday night had not dissipated much yesterday.
Their bewilderment about why the spectacular goal that Scott McTominay scored in the second half of the Group A match in La Cartuja was disallowed by Dutch referee Serbar Gozubuyuk following a contentious VAR check very much remained as well.
The matter had been debated at great length following the final whistle. Everyone and anyone had expressed an opinion about it. But nobody in the Scotland camp was any the wiser the morning after the night before.
Goalkeeper Angus Gunn called on tournament organisers UEFA to take action and endeavour to ensure that everyone inside a stadium, coaches, players and supporters, knows exactly why a decision has been made in future as he looked back on the 2-0 reverse.
“In the Premier League they tell you what the goal was disallowed for,” said the Norwich City player. “I didn’t see or hear anything like that on Thursday in the stadium. It 100 per cent needs to be clearer. VAR’s relatively new to football, so there are going to be further changes in the future. That should be one of them.”
If the McTominay strike on the hour mark had been allowed to stand there is every chance that Steve Clarke’s side would have gone on to get the result they needed against Luis de la Fuente’s team – and only a point would have sufficed – to book their place at the finals in Germany next summer.
However, the Scotland keeper, who conceded his first goals from open play in the Euro 2024 qualifying campaign during the 2-0 reverse to Spain, has no intention of dwelling on the painful incident. He believes it is vital that his team mates only look forward as well.
The national team will achieve their objective without kicking a ball if Norway fail to overcome Spain in Oslo tomorrow evening – but Gunn is only concerned with the friendly with France in Lille on Tuesday evening and then their final double header against Georgia away and Norway at home next month.
“When that free kick flew in everyone’s eyes lit up,” he said. “The dream was close. It was some hit from Scotty. That would have been a big moment.
“My eyes kinda lit up. I thought ‘this could be it’. We knew if we got the first goal that we would be tough to break down. It would have given us more to hold on to. It would have been another unbelievable moment. We have had plenty of those already in this group.
“But then the referee made his decision. It was so disappointing it wasn’t given, but we can’t change the referee’s mind now and we have to move on. Sometimes things go your way, but in Seville they didn’t. We have to put it behind us now.
“Who knows how it would have played out if that goal had counted and some other decisions had gone our way? Not an awful lot went our way on Thursday night. But I’m not going to make excuses. They are a top team and ultimately we have lost that game.
“We have to move on now. We’ve got France on Tuesday and then we have to move on to Georgia next month and get the three points there. We missed out on one on Thursday, but maybe in the next game we will benefit from VAR. It’s just one of those things.”
Gunn was impressed with the professional way that McTominay coped with having his goal chalked off on Thursday evening – and the maturity the United man showed gives him confidence that Scotland will not be affected by the Spain loss in the weeks ahead.
“You could see on the pitch that he was annoyed at the ref,” he said. “But I think he kept his emotions in check pretty well, to be honest. He performed superbly after that moment, which was obviously really disappointing for him.
“I thought we did alright as a team to sort of compose ourselves straight after it. But it was always going to give them a boost. The crowd was up after it, it was almost as if they had scored a goal when the referee blew his whistle. That was a hard moment in the game. They obviously scored just after that which gave them even more of a boost.
“I felt it was quite similar to the first game against them. They kept the ball a lot at the back. When they got into attacking areas they put a lot of balls into the box. For the majority of the night, we dealt really well with them.
“Obviously, the cross that has come in for Morata (Spain captain Alvaro scored their opening goal when he nodded in a Jesus Navas delivery) is really well timed. He’s a top striker and sometimes that happens.
“But we accepted that and had a few half chances near the end. Maybe we could have got a penalty or a little touch in the box and it could have been a different story. Still, we can be proud of ourselves. We are all disappointed, obviously, but the focus now has to be on the next two games we’ve got in the group.”
Gunn, who has firmly established himself as his adopted homeland’s first choice keeper since pledging his international allegiances to the country of his father’s birth earlier this year, is convinced the future is still bright for Scotland despite the loss on Thursday night.
“We wanted to go to Spain and finish the job off,” he said. “But what we’ve done already in the group has taken the pressure off ourselves a little bit. We’ve given ourselves a good platform to qualify. We have gone to a really hard place and for most of the game we have done really well.
“We are not going to get too down about the result. It’s annoying to lose our 100 per cent record, but we have done an unbelievable job so far to get into this position.”
