Scotland in 1998: Open with a bang, close with a whimper

Just hours away now from the greatest show on earth.

Really beginning to sting that we're not there. Again.

We're now equalling our worst run since we bypassed the event for 16 years from 1958. An inglorious run that somehow coincided with that period in the 1960's when it seemed as if Scottish footballers ruled the world.

For those of us born in the middle of that incredible sequence from 1974 to 1990 Scotland's place at the World Cup seemed assured. We might not do much when we got there but there was few better at actually making it onto the plane.

Missing the 1994 World Cup in the United States was a blemish on an enviable record. That was then. Now not going is the depressing norm.

12 years ago we were on the brink of the biggest game in our history. On the 10th of June 1998 Craig Brown's Scotland team walked, kilted, on to the pitch at the Stade de France. The waiting was about to be over. Scotland were ready. Ready to play Brazil in the opening game of the 1998 World Cup.

I can't begin to comprehend how they felt. It remains one of the most memorable days of my life as a football supporter. And I was in a pub in Edinburgh. When Flower of Scotland blasted from the TV and was echoed around the pub I'll admit that these eyes were glistening.

48 years on from our aborted qualification for the 1950 World Cup we were ready to face the tournament's most iconic nation. The world would be watching. Given the stage, given our history you might have feared the 90 minutes that were to follow.

Might have but probably didn't. This game caught the imagination like few others. Before kick off the streets really were dead. It seemed everyone was watching this game. Such was the interest it was always going to be safer to get to the pub early. As I hazily recall Scotland v Brazil kicked off a fortnight of magnificent drunkeness.

The game itself showed the best of us. We started it with the classic Scottish routine of our hopes appearing to die at the earliest possible moment. It took only four minutes for Cesar Sampai to put Brazil ahead.

But we didn't collapse, didn't fall meekly to the tanking that many thought we'd struggle to avoid.

In the 37th minute Kevin Gallacher - who was tireless up front - was pulled down. John Collins, at that moment surely the most composed Scot on the planet, stroked home the penalty. Pandemonium.

1-1 with Brazil, reigning champions, favourites, the mighty Brazil. And Scotland, perennial World Cup losers, had hunted them down and got back on level terms. It was magical.

Too magical to last perhaps. Brazil got another goal, as surely we knew they would. But such a cruel goal. A save from Leighton, a ricochet off Boyd, a lunging Colin Hendry on the line. Goal. 2-1 down. Brazil, the world's most storied attacking side, were beating us courtesy of a Tom Boyd own goal.

It proved the difference. Another glorious defeat, a valiant failure. Perhaps. But this was Brazil. And we'd held our own. Yes we'd lost another opening game but given the occasion, given all the hype, given the opposition, we'd done well.

It was a result to give the country hope, to give us some optimism as we looked ahead to the next two games.

In which light the coming events were to prove even more disappointing.

Next up Norway. Scotland played in yellow. It looked like a hot day. A different pub this time and there was a great deal on jugs of lager. We had a few.

Do Scotland always perform better when they can hide behind the role of gritty underdogs? Maybe we do. It certainly seemed to hold true against Norway where at times in the first half we looked like the only side who would even consider the possibility of attacking.

But we went in at the break still stuck at 0-0. Profligacy. Another Scottish disease. That afternoon it looked set to be as damaging to public health as childhood obesity.

It didn't stay 0-0 for long.

Haavard Flo got on the end of a cross. 1-0 Norway. Get another couple of jugs in. We're going to need them.

20 minutes later and Scotland were level. Was it a long ball or a searching pass from David Weir? It didn't matter a jot as Craig Burley latched on to it and got the equaliser.

How we needed that. Finally something to show for our chances. Get another couple of jugs in.

And 1-1 it stayed. Maybe we needed more. Maybe we should have got more. But we were hanging on. And twice we'd come from behind. Was there finally a hint of resilience about a Scottish World Cup team.

Into the final game. As it stood Brazil had qualified on six points, Norway had two points from two draws and Scotland and Morocco a point each.

Beat Morocco and hope Norway get no better than a draw against Brazil. Not easy but not impossible. The reward would be the second round at just the eighth time of asking.

Twelve years and the memories become clouded. Has the experience worsened with the distance of time? Has it become so bitter because there have been no fresh World Cup memories to soften the blow?

No. This was a sore one on the night and it's a sore one now.

Tuesday 23rd June 1998. Our last World Cup game for a generation. Maybe we would have laughed if you'd told us that at the time. But maybe not because it had the feeling of a crushing blow, of a era being bludgeoned to death.

Salaheddine Bassir scored after 22 minutes, Abdeljalil Hadda added another on 46 minutes and Bassir rounded things off with minutes to go. Somewhere along the way Craig Burley got sent off. Jim Leighton forgot where his near post was. It was that kind of night.

And the humiliation wasn't even necessary. The ditchwater dull Norwegians beat Brazil. Our game was academic.

There wasn't a jug of beer large enough now. The party hadn't so much ended as been broken by baton wielding police.

Eight World Cups, 23 games played. Four games won. 12 matches lost. 25 goals scored. 41 goals conceded.

If someone had said to me, as my friend said to me that night, that you'd just witnessed to curtain falling on a golden age for Scottish football you might have managed a bittersweet chuckle. But qualifying was our thing. Now that we can't even do that, what are we left with?

Scotland squad at the 1998 World Cup

Friends, whatever else happens, remember this: No country will ever again go to a World Cup with a squad that includes Tosh McKinlay and Matt Elliott. There is a glory in that.

Jim Leighton (Aberdeen)
Jackie McNamara (Celtic)
Tom Boyd (Celtic)
Colin Calderwood (Tottenham Hotspur)
Colin Hendry (Blackburn Rovers)
Tosh McKinlay (Celtic)
Kevin Gallacher (Blackburn Rovers)
Craig Burley (Celtic)
Gordon Durie (Rangers)
Darren Jackson (Celtic)
John Collins (AS Monaco)
Neil Sullivan (Wimbledon)
Simon Donnelly (Celtic)
Paul Lambert (Celtic)
Scott Gemmill (Nottingham Forest)
David Weir (Hearts)
Billy McKinlay (Blackburn Rovers)
Matthew Elliott (Leicester City)
Derek Whyte (Aberdeen)
Scott Booth (FC Utrecht)
Jonathan Gould (Celtic)
Christian Dailly (Derby County)

Yes, another bad night

Is there any point in dwelling on it?

We endure bad result after bad result.

We wonder how much more we can take.

How much more of Dougie Donnelly looking crestfallen? How much more of being laughed at?

And then we think: "Actually, no, stuff this - we’re not as bad as people are making out."

But suddenly, look out, a sucker punch.

Even by the miserable standards of this summer Hearts were bad last night.

They went to take on a decent – but not exceptional – side and suddenly the Tynecastle players didn’t appear confident in their teammates or in their own ability.

Up front was one of the few professional sports people outside of Japan that I would be confident of beating in a 100 yard dash. But not only was Nade slow – an affliction that can make him more appear more clueless than he actually is – he looked like he didn’t care. The Hearts fans should find that unforgiveable.

Was it a surprise? Not that Hearts lost. But that the tie should be so comprehensively over after the first leg is a bit more of a shock. This is, after all, the side that have most consistently been the “best of the rest” in Scotland.

The Romanov money may no longer flow down the Tynecastle terraces but they still pay reasonable wages and are enjoying a welcome period of stability. They will have expected more. And their fans should have got more.

The loss of an early goal is always difficult. But Hearts lost that goal through a series of individual mistakes. Not only did they fail to respond but they continued the same way. Individual performances were riddled with errors. The collective was blunt, shapeless and ultimately spineless.

Scotland, Falkirk, Aberdeen, Motherwell, Hearts. The list grows and grows.

This year has been exceptionally bad. But how much more catastrophe can we take before this becomes a habitual pattern?

A last 16 place in the Champion's League for Ranger or a Europa League run for Celtic is not enough. We need to look into these problems, find a solution and put it into practice. And we need to do it pretty quick.

The ba's burst

Norway 4 : 0 Scotland

Stone the crows. That was bad. Really bad, Berti Vogts bad.

Excuses and mitigation first. The red card was probably justified but you might still feel slightly hard done by. And we'd had a couple of minor sights at goal by that point.

And the free kick was deflected. But if you turn your back and jump into a free kick then the ball can go anywhere. Them's the breaks.

Of course really there can be no excuses. Hopeless, clueless, rudderless, leaderless, naive. Write a list of adjectives that shouldn't describe an international football team. Scotland were every one of those things tonight. And more.

We could have lost six or seven. And we did actually concede five before a moment of generosity from the officials denied Carew the goal that his performance deserved. A towering, pivotal performance that was amplified by the woeful inadequacy of the Scots.

You're hard pushed to find any heroes tonight. This was a team bonded by anonymity and coherent only in their woeful inability to come together as a serious international football team.

Gary Caldwell and George Burley will be the fall guys. And Caldwell was certainly silly to get his first booking and stupid to not avoid trouble in the minutes following that.

But with ten men Scotland looked like they had only five players on the park. For international footballers that reaction is not good enough. Not nearly good enough.

The calls will be for Burley to go now. Tonight. This minute. Many will want him to jump off the plane over the North Sea to better atone for his sins.

But who wants to inherit a team that's on the verge of failure. Let Burley see out this campaign. Then get a new man – if you can find one – before the Japan game.

Mathematicians will say qualification is still possible.

But maths doesn't win football matches and the job of raising that group of players seems too much. Even a second place in the group would probably not be enough.

We've failed to beat Norway and Macedonia so far in this group. That's not the form that deserves play off places let alone a seat at Fifa's South African jamboree.

"Whatever could have gone wrong tonight went wrong." That was Burley's reaction to this enormous failure.

After coming so close to Euro 2008 we were looking to take the next step. For that we needed a new leader. We were looking for Churchill. We were given Mr Mainwaring.

The sound of laughter you hear? That's coming from somewhere in Birmingham.

Norway v Scotland: Team news

The Scotland team to face Norway:

Marshall

Hutton
Caldwell, G
Caldwell, S
Davidson

Alexander
Brown
Fletcher
Commons
McCormack

Miller

First impressions:

No place for McFadden: Impact sub? I would have thought tonight might have been a night to use him to create a spark.

Lone frontman: Miller supported by McCormack and Commons as well as Brown and Fletcher. Puts pressure on the midfielders to score because there is a good chance Miller won't (remember Amsterdam - one touch, two touch, three touch, tackle!).

Holding midfielder: No place for the veteran Hartley. Replaced by the young gun that is 49 year old Graham Alexander. I don't really understand why that decision's been made. We'll see if it works.

Comeback kid: Callum Davidson back for the first time in seven years and, at 33, another injection of true youthful vigour.

Keeper: No surprise that Marshall plays with Alexander spending the last couple of weeks trying to talk himself out of both the Rangers and Scotland teams. There's modesty and there's being a bloody idiot.

The verdict: Remains the same. We can do it in a dull and methodical way. It's pretty close to the team a lot of people would have picked with the players in the squad. We might hear more about some of the more leftfield decisions if it all goes wrong though.

Scots can crack Norse Code

Injury call offs, an unfortunate schedule and a bloody idiot refusing to shut up.

It’s often difficult to distinguish George Burley from the condemned man waiting for the hangman to knock at the cell door. But sometimes the air of despondency seems to be just about justified.

Of course injuries and the timings of international matches can’t be controlled by the Scotland manager. And he can’t legislate for either the infernal whining of the ridiculous manchild Ferguson or the Glasgow media’s insistence on reporting his every word despite the clear evidence that King Barry is now but an inglorious footnote in the history of Scottish football.

Still it doesn’t take long to come to the conclusion that if George Burley fell in the Clyde he would, in fact, drown.

But let’s accentuate the positives. The squad, although lacking experience in some areas, is as Burley picked it. There have been injuries but none of the last minute call offs that the international manger usually suffers.

Both teams are approaching this as a must win if they are to keep their alive their chance of clinching second place behind Holland. For Scotland a second place finish will not only deliver a play off boost but could also provide a much needed boost to our seeding for future qualification tournaments.

And we certainly can win. Fletcher and Brown might still need a bit of time to gel but they can provide the nucleus of a strong midfield, a midfield that can actually be more balanced in the absence of Barry Ferguson.

James McFadden’s return will please both the manager and the fans, a morale boost that should transmit to the squad while Ross McCormack has impressed already and will look to make another impact.

Scotland can win. Some might say Scotland should win.

But there’s always a chance we won’t. For me there is just too much plodding ordinariness in the team. Sometimes the better players can raise those around them and sometimes it works the other way around. That’s the tightrope the national boss must walk.

I don’t doubt that Burley has the experience and skills to do the job. But I don’t think he’s been comfortable in it from the beginning. And when you’re dealing with the players only intermittently with no real margin for error then not being comfortable in the role is one hell of a drawback. Somewhere along the line that issue needs to be addressed.

But not today and not tomorrow.

There’s a game on and that is the important thing.

I’m going for a dull, dull game brightened only by Scotland emerging victorious. But it will be close and the safer bet might well be on the draw that is neither one thing or the other for either side.

Scots wey hey?

I can’t quite figure it out but I really think I’m beginning to care less and less about Scotland.

I’ll watch the game on Wednesday night. And I’ll be keen for us to do well. But I’ll be watching more in hope than expectation, I’ll be an armchair fan with very little invested in the result.

The thought of taking a trip to Hampden, far less trekking to Oslo, fills me with absolutely no wonder at all.

I was as incensed as the next man when Barry Ferguson and Allan McGreggor "shamed the nation." But it strikes me that the most emotional interaction I’ve had with Scotland since the Italy game (maybe even before as it always looked like we had too much to do) is being annoyed at a couple of neds acting like neds are supposed to.

And that seems odd to me. What’s going on?

Maybe its simply the inevitable apathy that is bred by repeated failures. When I was two Scotland played in the World Cup. They repeated that every four years (apart from once) until I was 18. They also notched up two Euro’s in that time.

We might not have done much when we got to major tournaments but by God we were as good as anyone at getting there.

Maybe the run of recent failures has made my formative years seem like a golden age of achievement. Maybe I’m simply getting old and turning into one of those "in my day, X, Y, Z were much better" grumpy old idiots that go to every football ground in the land.

Maybe it’s the manager. Andy Roxburgh and Craig Brown made being dull a virtue. George Burley strikes me as being one of the dullest men to have ever walked on the Hampden turf. I’m sure he’s not as bad as he seems but his mournful delivery and apparent “woe is me” reaction to every minor setback doesn’t inspire confidence.

If you’re going to pitch yourself as a duller version of Craig Brown then you really need to get success quite quickly to have any hope of capturing the public imagination. Chris Iwelumo sclaffing at a chance that Douglas Bader would have put away comfortably is probably not the level of glory you’re aiming for.

Then there’s the players. James McFadden might be a throwback who repeatedly has the pundits in raptures but is he a figure for a nation to rally around. Chick Young obviously thinks so. Clearly agreeing with Chick is out of the question so we’ll need to look elsewhere.

Stephen McManus? Nah. You can’t command the respect of a country when you’re clearly not good enough to live up to a hysterical press billing. Not even the new Colin Hendry let alone the new Billy McNeill.

Alan Hutton? Craig Gordon? A full back and a goalkeeper who may or may not get first team action for their clubs this year.

Scott Brown and Darran Fletcher? They need to come to the fore. If they don’t grab this squad, and the nation, by the scruff of the necks then nobody else well. But are either of them yet the characters that we need to galvanise a country?

So the manager and players aren’t helping me get over this growing disconnection. What else is there?

The fans. The fabled Tartan Army. The best fans in the world.

What a bunch of guys. But, you know, I find them increasingly cliquey and arrogant about their status as the best fans in the world. And all the enforced jollyness looks like bloody hard work.

Drinking all day and still having the energy to stand and sing catchy, if antiquated, ditties into a freezing night sky in a country you’d never heard of the last time Scotland played in a World Cup takes discipline. This is no longer going to the game with a few mates. This is football supporting as an endurance sport, fandom taken to Olympian heights. Smile though your heart is breaking…

Well, actually don’t. Somewhere along the line we’ve got confused. We seem to think that the only alternative to a destructive rampage through foreign cities when we get beaten is a laughter fuelled rampage through foreign cities when we get beaten.

Seriously, why the need for such extremes? Is the constant, maunfactured atmosphere of extreme happiness not exhausting. If I was a fully paid up member of the Tartan Army – I think I’m too misanthropic to be allowed – I’d be fecking knackered the whole time.

So there we have it. A lack of success. A manager who seems to be aiming to come across as a kind of inverted Ally Macleod. Players who are decent, honest and hardworking. But not players who are flirting with greatness. And loveable fans who are becoming increasingly less loveable because of their constant need to appear loveable.

The result is an increasing distance between myself and the national team. I watched the Holland game in particular with a sense of detachment. I wanted a good game certainly. I wanted Scotland to do well. But really I approached the game with the lack of passion you’d expect from a neutral. As I’m not becoming any less Scottish that’s strange.

Maybe it’s just me. I’m prepared to accept that. I am failing in my patriotic duty, a disgrace. People fought a war for my right to support Scotland. And I fling it back in their face.

Fine. Except I’m not sure it is just me.

The international game is being devalued by the neverending reach of the major European leagues. But Scotland, a small country used to punching above their weight with a weak domestic league, shouldn’t be in that position. The national team should still be a focal point.

And for many people it still is. But I don’t think I’m alone in becoming less passionate, less wrapped up in the country’s success and failures. And that’s a trend that worries me and one that I can’t find a cure for.