This summer’s World Cup will be the biggest and most commercial ever seen.
Not only has the competition been expanded to 48 teams, but the size and scope of the tournament, which is being played across three countries, will reach new levels in the coming weeks.
It will be a far cry from the tournaments of old, when the experience was less slick and polished and the capacity to involve more than a sprinkling of chaos.
Gordon Strachan on his World Cup adventures
Scotland have missed out on the last six World Cups, with their qualification that they won so dramatically against Denmark last year marking their first appearance since France 98.
Before then, the Tartan Army were regulars on the world stage, with their squads during the 1970s and ‘80s packed with players who were big on talent and big on personality.
Gordon Strachan was one such player, with the former Leeds United and Aberdeen midfielder a part of his country’s 1982 and 1986 tilts in Spain and Mexico, respectively.
“It was a different world,” he smiles as he looks back at his World Cup experiences with FourFourTwo.
“When you were at the World Cup, there were no phones, there was no telly – you were sharing a horrendous room with somebody who was the exact opposite of your wife!
“You would get one three-minute phone call a week, with someone queuing up behind you.”
These days, players are told how they must eat, sleep, train and even relax, but the ramshackle nature of the tournament in the 1980s - even when it came to matters as serious as drug testing - was a world away from what footballers experience today.
“You made your own fun – everybody wanted to be in the post-match drug test, because you could drink as much alcohol as you wanted until you needed a wee,” Strachan, who turned out 50 times for Scotland, adds.
“You’d think, ‘You beauty, I’m in the drug test!’
“There’d be you, a player from your side, and two from the other side – drinking with Scotsmen, many of them ended up drunk…”
