Rent Boy half-right: ‘It’s s***e being Scottish’ when it comes to football | OneFootball

Scotland need to stop being happy just to be at major tournaments; that World Cup was embarrassing and disastrous.

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Scotland have never given fans an adventure

There we go again. Another tournament and another flop from Scotland. Disappointed to say the least.

That makes our last three tournaments: Played 9, won 1, drawn 2, lost 6. Scored 4 goals and conceded a total I can’t be bothered to work out. It was ever thus.

There’s an oft-quoted scene from Trainspotting where Ewan McGregor angrily declares “It’s s***e being Scottish.” While I can’t say I wholly get behind the sentiment, we have great people and a beautiful country, when it comes to football it definitely feels true.

Just once in my life I’d love to have a proper tournament adventure. Irish fans can look back on a World Cup quarter final in 1990. Younger fans have seen them reach the last 16 in 2002 and again at Euro 2016. Wales made the semi finals of a major tournament and gave their fans the experience of a lifetime. England, for all their moaning, get to the knockout stages of almost every tournament. Even Northern Ireland had a last-16 match in 2016.

What have Scotland had? A James McFadden goal that didn’t even lead to qualification. A Scott McTominay bicycle kick that did. That’s about it. No grand adventure. Not even really coming close to one. We did of course win the 2006 Kirin Cup (Look it up kids). But that’s about the extent of our success.

I’ll disagree slightly with Shrivathsa, who suggested a 3 0 win would have seen us through. I agree we should have given it more of a go, but I’m not sure where the evidence is that we could actually have done it. Brazil only beat Haiti 3-0 and Morocco beat them 4-2. We were fortunate to get a 1 0 win, so even if we’d taken the handbrake off, there was no guarantee we suddenly score three and concede none.

Steve Clarke has to take a huge amount of the criticism. Yes, he has got us to three major tournaments, but he’s also benefited from a better group of players and expanded tournaments (although we would still have qualify for this World Cup under the old format).

Also worth remembering we were incredibly lucky in qualifying, especially against Greece who must be wondering what they would have achieved instead of us. He’s now taken us to three major tournaments. Nine matches. I’d say we’ve played well in two of them.

People can blame the players as much as they like, but look at New Zealand, Haiti, Cape Verde, Curaçao and DR Congo. All below us in the rankings. All with fewer resources than Scotland. Yet every one of them has put in a better performance than we have.

We’re not technically out of it. An incredibly fortuitous sequence of results could still see us through. But we wouldn’t deserve it, and I’m not sure I even want to get up at 2am to watch us again.

I’m glad the fans put on another great show, and it’s nice that everyone seems to love Scotland. But at some point the players have to give us something back. We need to stop just being happy to be there. Mike, LFC, Dubai

Scotland too conservative again

Looks like Scotland will be going home early again and really they deserve to go early. 1 goal in 3 games and even that was a deflection, against Morocco and Brazil not 1 clear goal chance created.

They were the masters of their own donwfall last night v Brazil, gifting goals. The ironic thing is the first 2 goals were because they took unnecessary risks in their own 18 yard box but in midfield and up front they took no risks.

Too conservative, passing sideways, not taking people on. One clear example was one of the centre backs came out of defence with the ball reached the halway line, there was a huge space ahead of him for him to continue moving forward but no, stopped at half way line, made a safe pass back to his other centre back, and then eventuallly it ended up back with the goalkeeper.

Great fans but unfortunately team and coach were not up to it. Ken, Cork, Ireland

Makes a mockery of World Cup that there’s even a chance

A team like Scotland, with one win and two defeats possibly being able to still go through to the knockout rounds shows just what a joke a 48 year old team World Cup is. Dan, London

Save us, JCVD

Please let ITV employ Steve Clarke as a pundit and sit him next to Roy Keane.

I think Steve Clarke is genuinely always miserable, and Roy Keane has made a very successful career for himself by pretending to be angry at everything.

I’d half expect them to fuse together like Senator Aaron McComb at the end of Timecop. Ant MUFC (I’m sure the 14 other people who saw that movie will get the reference)

Some England perspective

The England pessimists after a draw against a team that fully deserved the draw is so ridiculous.

I did find, Ian, LFC in Belgium particularly funny in saying “Still not as good as France, Spain, Germany, Argentina or Brazil. Quarter-final exit on penalties here we come.”

Is that the same Spain that drew 0-0 with the mighty Cape Verde. Also worth noting that the current holders lost their opening game of 2022 2-1 to the mighty Saudi Arabia.

England are still in the mix, we have the pain of knockout football to endure so get behind your team and stop the whining. Jon, Cape Town

Bellingham fingered!

I saw that the mailbox from yesterday UK time was headlined ”’Repulsive’ Jude Bellingham fingered as the England problem again’. If he continues to behave in this manner (which I would say, doesn’t bother or irritate me anyway), will he end being rimmed and reamed too?

As an aside, I see that F365 has been using the silly / illiterate phrase ‘pockets of space’ (as seen in Ian Watson’s article headlined ‘Clamour for Cole Palmer amid five England exiles Tuchel now needs)’. I don’t know where this originated, and why anyone would use it where ‘small spaces’ or just ‘space’ are perfectly adequate. Stop using pundit nonsense like this, it makes you come across like Shearer with his repetitive ‘back of the net’ bullshit, rather than using the more simple option ‘net’. A, LFC, Montreal