shannon2007

Argie Bargie

As one of the favourites to win the World Cup, Argentina was probably the one game the Scots were guaranteed to win. The pattern of Scotland in the World Cup could be quite predictable really. Draw with the team on the similar level, beat the favourites and then lose to the minnows. You could almost hear the script being written as we travelled to the next match, knowing that Belgium had just beaten the UAE by a single goal to nil. That of course put them top with four points, and meant if Argentina beat us, they would be into the next round, and might not try so hard against Belgium. On the other had, the UAE were on the next plane home, and simply might not care.

Yet that was the future, and this was now. I would happily settle for a draw in this game, as it would mean a win over the UAE would give us a chance to progress, and despite the negative vibes and joking in the press, I was determined we would not lose to the UAE. We were far too good for that. Mind you, the English had arrived in Germany believing that they were far too good for everyone. Following up their 4-1 humiliation from Japan, they were only able to gain a 1-1 draw with Chile, and although they did beat Ghana 3-1 in their final game, they were to go out of the tournament. That at least would take a bit of the heat from us if we were to follow them home.

The first half against Argentina, it seemed that the gulf between where we had reached, and the top level, was still a bit too great, as a 13th minute strike from Javier Saviola gave the South Americans the lead, and although it was fair to say we hadn’t played overly badly, it did look as if we would go in at the break behind, until Paul Gallacher bagged his third goal of the tournament with virtually the last kick of the half. Such things can be turning points in games.

What would have happened had Gallacher not pulled us level is, of course, impossible to speculate, but as the second half progressed, Argentina were not looking as confident or threatening as they had in the first, and you could see the self belief grow in the Scotland team. On the hour mark, I made a double substitution, removing Charlie Adam and Derek Riordan, who hadn’t played particularly badly, but at this stage I felt fresh legs would give us new impetus, and on came Darren Fletcher and Scott Brown. Eight minutes later, Barry Ferguson sent us into a sensational lead, and just four minutes after that Steven Pressley hammered home a penalty, and it was with more than a little disbelief that the Argentinians restarted the game, trailing by three goals to one.

Almost immediately though, Claudio Lopez pulled a goal back, but there was a feeling that this was going to be our night, and we were not about to throw this great opportunity away. Argentina knew they were in trouble, but they seemed unable to perform as a unit now, and with six minutes left Fletcher hit a screamer from the edge of the box, and surely the points were now ours. The favourites were floundering, and looked a beaten and bemused side, and it was in that context hardly a surprise when Scott Brown added an incredible fifth, two minutes from time. This was the stuff of fairy tales, its what the World Cup is all about, and even though Carlos Tevez did catch our defence napping in injury time, to make the final score five three, nothing could conceal the fact that we had totally outplayed one of the best teams in the competition.

It seemed this might be a World Cup of upsets, when an outsider could nip and win it. Although we had no right to think it could be us, there was no reason at this moment in time to believe it wouldn’t be. Suddenly, the self belief that we were the greatest footballing nation on the planet, was back. And we had set ourselves up once more for a huge, and bloody fall…..

retired_bbcarr

excellent result. though, as you mentioned in the early part of the post, i'm kind of expecting a defeat against the UAE now.

shannon2007

Yes, well we all know it makes perfect sense. Probably be 0-0 till the 94th minute then a fan runs onto the park and scores. So typically Scotland

shannon2007

Run The Arabs are Here!!

We were now in a position where we could finally kill off our World Cup jinx, and reach the knock out stages for the first ever time. And of truth be told, this was probably the best ever chance we had, and possibly might ever have. All we needed to do was draw with the United Arab Emirates. All we needed to do.

Of course, for most countries that wouldn’t be a problem. Sure the UAE were a half decent side, otherwise they wouldn’t be the World Cup, but having lost both their games so far, they were not going through. On paper, this was an easy win for us. But anyone who has any knowledge of Scottish football knows, that we have this incredible habit of shooting ourselves in the head. So although in reality we should win this game, never mind draw, I wasn’t taking anything for granted. We could still go out if we lost, and that bow would simply not be acceptable. I wasn’t going to follow in the footsteps of my more illustrious predecessors., and guide Scotland to glorious, or even inglorious, failure. Not now, that we had successfully negotiated the two tougher hurdles. It was time for Scotland to buck the trend, and go out and give the minnows a damn good thrashing.

It was a hard balancing act in the build up to the match. On the one hand, I wanted the players pumped up, I wanted them to know that they were superior to the UAE and that this was a match we should win. On the other hand, I didn’t want any overconfidence creeping in. We had become a good footballing unit, not because we had the best players in the world, because we certainly didn’t, but because we had learned to play for each other. And for our country. If we lost to the UAE we wouldn’t just be letting ourselves down, we would be letting down a whole nation, and that simply wasn’t acceptable.

We had come a long way in the two years I had been in charge, but all that could be undone by one poor result, and we would be back to where we started. The players knew the score, and they knew that if they performed, they would become legends. Many better Scotland sides had come to this stage, and fallen flat on their faces. We may not be their equal in footballing skills, but we could become their betters in our achievements. If only we could keep believing.

We needed a good start in the match, to kill off any nerves, and to disabuse any notion the Arabs might have of gaining a consolation victory. A draw would be good enough, whatever the result in the other game, but playing for a draw a dangerous precept, and besides I wanted the win. I didn’t want people saying we had fluked our way through.

Obviously there were nerves in the squad, but 20 minutes into the game James McFadden, who failed on the whole to live up to his considerable talent during my reign as Scotland boss, sent us ahead with a great goal, and when youngster Charlie Adam added a second seven minutes from time, the whole of Scotland breathed a collective sigh of relief. For surely, not even we could now lose three goals, that would just be too cruel. On the hour mark, McFadden added the third, and that was that.

Two years ago, the national side had been in a chaotic mess, caused partly by the ineptitude of Berti Vogts and Craig Brown, and partly by the abysmal failure of the Scottish Footballing big wigs to understand the need for the protection of the home grown talent that surely couldn’t just have vanished for no reason? Now, having come together as a team, we had done what no other Scotland side had done. We had reached the knockout stages of the World Cup. It didn’t matter what we did now, we were legends, and no-one could knock us. But when the results placed us with Denmark in the last sixteen, it became clear to me that what we achieved wasn’t enough. We had much, much more to achieve. If only we could keep believing…..

shannon2007

Danish Pastries

I like to think that during my reign as Scotland manager, and indeed at the club sides I would go on to manage, that I treated the players under my charge with dignity and respect. They were adults, and as long as they behaved as such, they would be treated as they should be. For instance, during our stay in Germany, I didn’t mind if the players went out at night, as long as they were sensible and as long as they turned up at 8am for breakfast looking as if they hadn’t actually been out all night. There were exceptions of course, and some rules had to be laid down. On the night before a match, no-one was allowed out, and everyone had to be in their beds by 11pm, even if it was an evening game.

My other stringent rule was, that for the duration of the tournament, the players would not be allowed to read the crap that was usually printed in the Scottish press. Partly because I didn’t think they needed to read it, and partly because I didn’t want their brains fried by the rubbish written therein. The morning after the match with UAE was the one exception to that rule. The morning after the UAE match was, in itself, the most exceptional day in the whole history of Scottish football.

Beating a side like the UAE was, of course, not that big a deal. At least it wouldn’t be for most other nations around our level. For us, it was like having a huge weight, an evil curse, think of any cliché you like, removed. And the fact was, until we saw it in black in white, it was hard to believe the truth. That this wasn’t a dream. We really had reached the 2nd phase of the World Cup for the first ever time. We really were legends.

And that was another thing about the **** that disguises itself as sports journalists in Scotland. A bigger bunch of ignorant, two faced bast-ards, you’ll never meet. These were the people who put Ally McLeod on a pedestal in 1978, and then used it to hang him. You couldn’t trust them as far as you could throw them, and since most of the were also largely overweight, what wasn’t very far. When I had taken over this job, lets just say few, if indeed any of them, had been polite about my appointment, predicting doom and gloom and trying to convince their readers that it didn’t matter anyway, because Scotland didn’t have decent players. And they had the cheek to call themselves Scottish sports writers.

Of course, now that we had achieved what they claimed we could never get near, they had changed their tune, and a lot of them were trying to claim they had seen it coming all along. Lying bassas the lot of them, and I always made it my point to have a shower after speaking to them. Especially Chic Young. You had to remove his spittal.

On though to the thing that really counted, and that of course were the Danes. They had come through what most people would agree was a fairly easy group. Apart from Brazil, whom they had lost to by a goal to nil, they had beaten Morocco and Jordan, hardly a tough test. It was hard to judge the quality of the side from those results, but we knew the Danes had a few decent players, and were at least our equals in footballing terms. We knew also that we could beat them.

We only had four days to prepare for the match, but that was more than enough time, and any longer would just have lead to the players getting bored. Or even got them to thinking, and that’s something you really need to avoid with a group of footballers. The match would be in Berlin, but we decided to remain in Hamburg until the night before the match, before travelling and staying overnight for the 3pm kick off. The eyes of the world would be upon us, and with England away home, the eyes of the whole of the UK. Which was probably even more scarey.

The match itself didn’t quite live up to expectations, which was of a fast flowing game, as the occasion seemed to get to the teams, who tended to balance each other out over the piece. Paul Gallacher finally broke the deadlock nine minutes from half time, but Denmark literally pulled level immediately, and needless to say I was not amused by that state of affairs. With less than half a minute of normal time left though, Charlie Adam set up McFadden, and for once he found the net with his effort, and we went in at the break ahead.

If, apart from the late goals, the first half had been less than a footballing spectacular, the second was to be even worse. There was little real football played, and if Im honest this was one of the worst performances, in footballing terms, that we turned in under my charge. And yet, with neither side seemingly capable of adding to the scoreline, the result in the end out shone the mediocrity of play. For we held on to win of course, and had reached the last eight of the World Cup. We would play Spain, and it was already being touted in some places, rather ludicrously, that our name must surely be on the trophy now. If it was, I hoped someone would forget to scrub it off….

shannon2007

Spanish Eyes

The world we were living in had become rather surreal. Something wasn’t quite right, and that something was very clear to see. Scotland were in the Quarter Finals of the World Cup. The fact of us being here was so immense, it threaten to rip apart the space-time continuum, and you could almost feel the whole of reality shaking with disbelief.

It was a strange time for us, because most, if not all, of the squad should have been on holiday by now, sunning it in the Caribbean or south of France. Yet here we were, having twice cancelled our flights back home, and we were mixing it with the big boys. The other three semis would see Brazil take on Holland, Nigeria would play Colombia and France took on Sweden. It wasn’t exactly the last eight the experts had predicted, and it all pointed to a Brazil/France Final. The rest of us I’m sure, were going to try our best to make sure that didn’t happen.

Our match with Spain was bound to be a tough one. They always had a squad of talented players, but somehow the Spanish, like ourselves, had never really done it when it came to the World Cup. Now though, having got this far and drawn what most people probably considered the worst side left, they surely fancied their chances. The Spanish had come through a reasonably tough group. They had lost to Holland, but wins over Senegal and South Korea saw them safely into a match with Japan. Despite their win over England, the Japanese proved little match for the Spanish, who brushed them aside easily by three goals to one.

It was, therefore, not so easy to judge the standard of this Spanish side. We all knew they had world class players, such as Raul and Reyes, but just how together they were as a team remained to be seen. On their day, they could beat anyone, and we just had to hope that the day we played them wasn’t their day, or the chances were we could have been very humiliated indeed. We weren’t totally unaware that we were riding a great deal of luck here, but we also believed we had sufficient talent, and certainly sufficient team work, to give anyone a run for their money.

James McFadden it seemed, had suddenly remember that he was supposed to be the most talented Scots player of his generation. During the qualifiers, he had been very disappointing, and a lot of that could be put down to having a fairly torrid time at Everton. Nine minutes into the match with Spain, he found the net once more to send us ahead, and this was the McFadden we all knew existed, the McFadden who excited us with his talent.

Whether the Spanish were having an off day, or whether they had just turned up bloated with overconfidence is hard to say, but when Charlie Adam added a second goal on 19 minutes, you would have though they would wake up to the fact that they were in very real trouble. But when the chips are down, the Spaniards just don’t seem to have that will to dig in and fight, and they were being given a total run around by a side whose confidence was off the scale. Nine minutes from half time, Barry Ferguson sent a glorious 30 yard free kick beyond the reach of Ilker Casillas, and to all intents and purposes, the match was over. To go in three up on one of the best footballing nations on the planet was simply unbelievable.

Yet if Spain had realised they would need to roll up there sleeves and work to get back into this tie, they certainly didn’t show it, as they came out for the second half, and McFadden promptly added a fourth. Now there was no way back for the Spaniards, and once more their World Cup dreams had disintegrated. To be fair, we had played some excellent football, but the plain fact was that once again, the Spanish had failed to turn it on when it really mattered, and now they were paying the price.

Football though can be a funny old game, and having looked totally inept for most of the game, for the last fifteen minutes the Spanish started to finally look like the side they probably should be. With eight minutes remaining, Varela gained them a consolation strike, and although Luque slotted home a penalty in injury time, they had left it way too late, and we held on for a quite stunning victory. We weren’t the only side to pull of a stunning win though, for Sweden had come through after extra time against France, and it was they we would play in the Semi Finals.

By now, even I was starting to believe that we might just be able to win this. But that was crazy talk……

shannon2007

The World Cup 2006 Semi Final

Only Sweden now stood between ourselves, and a place in the Final of the World Cup, which we now knew, would be against Brazil. Sweden of course had already played a World Cup Final against Brazil, when they had lost 5-2 in 1958. We on the other hand, hadn’t. But that was irrelevant to either country, as we both stood on the verge of greatness. Indeed, as far as I was concerned, this Scotland team had already surpassed greatness, and I hoped that whatever happened against Sweden, the Scottish press would recognize that.

That we could beat Sweden wasn’t something to be debated. Not only had we beaten them recently, albeit in a friendly, but, the France game apart, their run to the Semis hadn’t been overly impressive. A 2-2 draw with Slovakia in their opening game didn’t exactly set Swedish hearts racing, but an excellent 3-0 win over Portugal eased any fears the Swedes had. That was, until they lost by two nil to Saudi Arabia. A 1-0 win over Mexico had seen them through to face France, and it wasn’t until that game that the Swedes showed anywhere near a team who could be in with a shout of winning the tournament.

I was convinced that this was a match we could, and should win. If we could rise above the occasion, if we could produce anything near our best, we would be in the Final. Of course, we also had to guard against complacency. In many ways, it might have been better to be playing France, because then we wouldn’t be going into the match expecting to win. And as any Scotland supporter knows, when we go into a match expecting to win, that’s when we inevitably fall flat on our faces.

The build up to the game was as light hearted as it could be, as we tried to avoid the press, and get on with our preparations, which wasn’t an easy thing. When we had arrived here, few people outside Scotland wanted to know us. Now, it seemed like the whole world did. Yet somehow, we managed to find time to put together our game plan, and to prepare ourselves for a match the likes of which we would only ever beat, by reaching the final.

Semi Final matches are notoriously boring affairs. There have been some exceptions, but this was not to be one of them. By the end of 90 minutes, neither side had been able to break the other down, and we were into a energy sapping extra half an hour. If normal time had produced nothing, extra time wasn’t to be much better. Not until five minutes from the end, when Charlie Adam found James McFadden with a through ball, and finding a surge of energy from somewhere, the striker thundered the ball high into the right hand corner of the Swedish net, and Scotland were in the World Cup Final.

For McFadden though, just as he was reaching the point of greatness, came the severe blow that the yellow card he had picked up would mean him missing the biggest match of his life. It was a situation that I found deplorable, but there was nothing we could do about it, and although it was a personal tragedy for James, we were too much on a high to really offer the lad much sympathy. He would just have to get over it.

Meanwhile, we were gearing up for the game of our lives. We had Brazil, the greatest footballing nation in the world, in the final of the greatest footballing tournament. And there was one thing that kept nagging and nagging, over and over. Scotland had never beaten Brazil…..

retired_tonytranbg79

Surely not Scotland in the World Cup Final :eek:

Well done, waiting to find out if he stays as manager or will go into club management.

Mike..

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Peacemaker7:

I like to think that during my reign as Scotland manager, and indeed at the club sides I would go on to manage... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That answer your question Ty?

And well done PM, superb achievement and presentation

retired_tonytranbg79

Ah clue in the text, but hasn't happened in the story yet, may not happen :p

digged myself out of that one