While history rarely repeats itself, it sometimes rhymes. When Scotland lost to Brazil in their final game at Italia 90, Costa Rica’s win over Sweden ended any prospect of finishing in the top two of Group C. Automatic qualification for the knock-out stages was gone.
A small shaft of light remained. FIFA decreed that four of the best third place finishers from the six groups would be granted a place in the last 16. After one win, two points and a goal difference of minus one Scotland repaired to their Rapallo hotel to watch and wonder. Their fate was placed in the hands of other teams.
The wait was mercifully brief. In the final seconds of Uruguay’s game against South Korea in Udine, a 20-year-old Daniel Fonseca marked his World Cup debut by rising to head home a long free-kick from Alfonso Dominguez. The South American’s first international goal secured one of the best third place slots and progress to the second stage for the first time in 20 years.
The following night Niall Quinn secure an equaliser for the Republic of Ireland against the Netherlands in Group F. In a World Cup beset by goalkeeping blunders Hans Van Breukelen’s tipped the Dutch into third place and the luck of the Irish ensured that Scotland - once again - were out.
Alan Ferguson, employed as a marketing consultant for the World Cups of 1982, 1986 and 1990, remembers the squad’s bittersweet reaction to an early flight home.
“That wasn’t the happiest of camps,” he told Herald Sport last month. “And the thing was that, had certain results gone our way we were going to Rome to play Italy.
“Someone (Uruguay) scored in the 91st minute in another game to knock Scotland out and, while I’m not saying there was a cheer when the goal went in exactly, the team had been there for 23 days. That was enough.”
Former defender Maurice Malpas recalls 1990 as another classic case of, “so near yet so far. The old Scottish story.
"We weren’t quite out on the night. We’d to wait on other results going our way, but they didn’t. It was a case of packing our bags and heading home the next day."
Heading into the Brazil game the Scots needed a point; a single precious point. While the performance in Turin was more composed than the error strewn collapse of Miami on Wednesday night, the outcome was much the same.
As a footballing nation Scotland have always found a way to defy the odds and not in a good way. The words of former manager Andy Roxburgh after the failure of 1990 remains as true now as they were then.
“We knew after the Brazil match that it was going to be like a game of roulette - and some of us have never been very good at that.”
Gianni Infantino’s expanded 48 team World Cup mean that eight of the 12 third place group finishers progress to the last 32. With more safety nets than ever before Steve Clarke’s team were offered an unparalleled opportunity to do what no Scotland team had managed to do before. Lifting the gun they fired buckshot into their own feet. They found a way to slip through the gaps.
Three of the four goals lost to Morocco and Brazil were acts of self inflicted harm. Before the 3-0 defeat in Miami Gardens the Opta simulation model rated Scottish chances of qualification as high as 85% and journalists began plotting a route to Mexico City for a game in the last 32 in the iconic Aztec Stadium.
The minute Scott McKenna’s heavy touch gifted the opening goal to Vinicius Junior the percentage began to tumble rapidly. While a 2-0 defeat might have preserved a modicum of hope Matheus Cunha’s second half strike pretty much killed them. Inside 48 hours Opta downgraded the chances to 40%, then 25%, then 14%. At the time of writing, they hovered around 5%.
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Even the weather is deflated. Far from googling flights to Mexico City or Boston, deflated hacks spent a wet day in Charlotte focussing on finding a route home to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Caught in a tedious holding pattern, Scotland’s management and players now await permission from air traffic control to land the plane on home soil.
“I’m gutted,” said goalkeeper Angus Gunn, “so disappointed. We’ve just to got sit and wait now - and pray that we get another chance.
“The manner of the goals we’ve conceded in the tournament has been disappointing.
“Because I think, other than those mistakes, we’ve actually looked pretty good on the ball and we’ve controlled a lot of the possession against better teams than us, which previously we’ve not done. But those errors have obviously cost us.”
Questions over the SFA’s decision to grant a new four year contract to manager Steve Clarke before the tournament began are natural and justified, but ignore the alternative.
Had Scotland still performed as poorly as they have, a failure to extend Clarke’s deal beyond the World Cup finals would have been cited as further evidence of bungling management.
Determined to give the manager everything he needed to succeed in terms of travel and pre-match preparation it would have made little sense to withhold the contract he wanted as well. Accusations of undermining the team’s chances by creating uncertainty and repeated questions from the media over Clarke’s future would have followed as clearly as night follows day. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.
Modern football dictates that the manager cops the flak for the failure of a team. Yet the boredom antagonism towards Clarke from fans should never give a free pass to the players who made huge individual mistakes clinically punished at this level.
A team is only as strong as its weakest links and three of the four goals conceded against Morocco and Brazil stemmed from defensive cock ups. In last two tournaments the team have now scored just once in three games and it should be clear to even the most virulent Clarke critics that, when Scotland players perform at big clubs, they are surrounded by better players. Defence, attack and goalkeeper are areas where the options are patchy or average and against teams in the top ten of the FIFA rankings average fails to cut it.
While Gunn failed to cover himself in glory for Brazil’s second goal he atoned by making important saves to keep the scoreline respectable. Regrettably it was never respectable enough to enhance hopes of a place in the second stage of the tournament for the first time ever.
“I can’t feel pleased with myself and how I’ve played - not right now. Because we’ve conceded goals and lost games. But you never know, that one goal difference could mean we’re in or out.
“I’m not sure what the next days look like. We’ll recover because it was tough to catch our breath on Wednesday night. Then we’ll be watching the games, praying that we get another chance.”
Scotland are entitled to curse a draw which landed them in the only group with two top 10 nations included. That was not the case in December, when the draw was made and Morocco sat outside the top ten. Only Group L, with England and Croatia in it, comes close to the same exacting standards.
A 48 team tournament also poses integrity issues. When Scotland needed Australia to go for the jugular of Paraguay they had no incentive to do so. A point apiece ensured that both teams progressed and the same will apply when Algeria face Austria. A repeat of the infamous ‘Disgrace of Gijon’ game between Austria and West Germany in 1982 now beckons and that can’t be good for any tournament.
“It’s a unique, weird place to be,” adds Gunn. “Being in one of the earlier groups, we didn’t know what we had to do.
“The teams later on know exactly what they have to do so it’s tough watching those games. It’s hard to say whether we’ve done ourselves justice over the three games.
“Haiti as the lowest ranked nation was the one we hoped to get points in. The others, we knew were going to be tough. But we believed in ourselves; we could nick something from it. Hopefully the goal difference doesn’t back to bite us….”
The likes of Billy Bremner, Joe Jordan and Roy Aitken uttered those self same words in 1974, 1978, 1982 and 1990. Mentally and physically drained players prayed for a miracle and, when that failed to materialise, prayed for a quick flight home instead. The World Cup wait can be a dispiriting experience when the final outcome feels like a foregone conclusion.
