Secure a point against Brazil, and Scotland’s national team can indulge themselves with some mutual backslapping. Lose by two, three or four goals to the five-time world champions, and players will slink off the Miami pitch and return to their North Carolina training base to wait and wonder.
Four points from Group C will be enough to claim a place in the last 32 of the World Cup finals for the first time ever. There is also a scenario where a thumping from Brazil could still secure qualification, followed by a sheepish apology to fans.
Lose and the full picture could remain uncertain until the early hours of Saturday morning. An inglorious way to make history would become torturous as results from the other games in the other groups play out. If the third-place teams in groups A, E, G and H fail to reach three points, even a 6-0 defeat to Brazil would still be enough to see Steve Clarke’s team finish one of the eight best placed third-place finishers.
If – in very Scottish fashion – results conspire to leave them ninth of 12, the tournament will end this weekend in the same way as all the rest. With an early flight home.
Clarke does not want an iconic moment for the national team to be followed by a mea culpa. A sheepish admission that they have no business being in the knockout stages after stinking out the tournament.
“You want the iconic moment like the iconic moments we had at Hampden against Denmark,” he admits. They’re the iconic moments.
“They’re the ones that you want, that you remember, and you can say, ‘We won and we got what we wanted out the game’.”
Only once, in four meetings with Brazil at the World Cup, have Scotland managed to avoid defeat. If Billy Bremner had put his infamous miss on the other side of the posts in 1974, the nation would have been spared all this angst. All the anguish and agonising over the failure to reach the second stage of a major international tournament.
A 0-0 draw in 1974 was followed by Dave Narey sticking his legendary ‘toe poke’ into the postage stamp corner at Spain ’82. The remainder of a 4-1 defeat was best viewed through the cracks of the fingers.
In 1990 and 1998, the Scots lost 1-0 and then 2-1 and a repeat of either of those scorelines would be disappointing, but far from disastrous. Three points and a goal difference of minus one would offer a decent chance of progress. Even then, a wait-and-see scenario back in Charlotte is unavoidable.
“I don’t think we have beaten them in 10 attempts – that’s another another tick for this group to do,” adds Clarke. “This group has been setting records and doing fantastic for the country, and let’s see how many more boxes we can get ticked.”
An injury to Brazil’s brilliant Barcelona winger Raphinha helps. What impact the return of a 34-year-old Neymar to the World Cup stage might have is anyone’s guess. Brazil’s record scorer has struggled for fitness since ACL surgery and will play his first game for the national team in almost three years.
“They are Brazil,” reasons Clarke. “They’ve got good players all over the pitch. We know we have to be the best version of ourselves.
“We have to defend the 1v1s well. They are tricky, they’ve got players who can beat you.”
Vinicius Junior, Real Madrid’s superstar winger, has scored in both games so far. Matheus Cunha was one of two changes against Haiti – replacing Igor Thiago – and the Manchester United striker scored twice.
“They play a clever way sometimes, they drop the striker out, they make it difficult for you to defend,” Clarke noted. “By the time we get to the game, the players will know everything that they’re going to have to worry about with Brazil. And then we just have to make sure that we turn up.”
Scotland took too long to turn up against Morocco. The loss of a goal after 70 seconds was a calamitous affair and any repeat against the team ranked fifth in the world would make for a long, painful night. Leaving the airport concourse in Miami the heat was oppressive, the humidity a level above anything experienced in Boston or Charlotte. These conditions drain the energy.
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The yellow jersey of Brazil also carries an aura; a cachet which no other team in international football can quite match.
At the helm of a multi-talented team is Don Carlo. At 67, Ancelotti is one of the most decorated managers of all time. A man capable of changing a game by raising one eyebrow, the Italian has won five Champions Leagues, three FIFA Club World Cups, five UEFA Super Cups and remains the only manager to win titles in all of Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues.
“He has had a fantastic career,” Clarke acknowledges. “I know him a little bit but don’t know him very well. We spoke a little bit after the draw was made, just a couple of words – ‘See you in June’.
“His career is up there for everybody to look at. He’s one of the best coaches ever, having won everything.”
The chance to pit his coaching brain against a man like Ancelotti at the World Cup finals comes along once in a lifetime, if that. After a career spent working side by side with Jose Mourinho, Ruud Gullit and Kenny Dalglish, Clarke has nothing to prove to anyone in the game. Personal duals hold no interest.
“What gets me excited is the chance to put our players on the pitch, on this stage, and say ‘C’mon guys, let’s do it for the country’,” Clarke said.
“That gets me going more than who I’m playing against or who I’m pitting my wits against with questions of ‘Who’s the tactical genius?’ and everything else that goes with it.
“That’s not important to me. You know me better than that by now. That’s not me.
“I want our players to be the best version of themselves that they can be on the night, on the world stage, against a top-ten team. For me, that would be the ultimate. We can improve on what we did against Morocco with the ball. We have to.”
The World Cup of superstar strikers is upon us. The highest goalscorer in World Cup history, Lionel Messi’s missed penalty against Austria denied him two hat-tricks in two games. Kylian Mbappe of France and Erling Haaland of Norway have both scored four apiece. England’s Harry Kane is coming up on the rails.
Scotland have no world-class strikers like that and that’s half the problem. A team is only as strong as its weakest link and, when the World Cup is over, Clarke will sit down with new SFA head of football Craig Mullholland to discuss the dearth of centre-forwards, goalkeepers and central defenders coming through the system and how to address it.
Until then, he needs to find a way to test Brazil keeper Alisson with the players he has now.
Against Morocco, the Scots failed to muster a shot on target and, with goal difference key to hopes of the last 32, the goals they score are just as important as the goals they lose.
“We didn’t create that clean chance,” Clarke said. “If we can create one or two clean chances, we will score the goals.
“You are only talking one or two little scenarios where the last pass is a little bit better or the last cross is just a little bit better.
“It’s not like you’re going to have to create chance after chance after chance after chance. You’re going to create two or three really golden chances and you take one of them.”
Despite calls from frustrated fans to release the handbrake, the approach is unlikely to change. Denying space and opportunities to Brazil and trying to nick a goal might be as good as it gets. The team could be a goal down with 10 minutes to go and a gung-ho approach would still be self-defeating.
“You have got to understand where the game is at,” says Clarke. If we are under pressure and we’re hanging on, then obviously you’re just going to try and sit and see it out.
“But we’ve been talking about living the dream. We’re all living the dream. We’re all at a World Cup after however many years away.
“You’re here to represent your country. You go to Miami to play against Brazil as a Scottish player. It doesn’t come much bigger than that. So let’s just go and express ourselves and see what we can do.”
