Scotland bid to banish group stage hoodoo as long World Cup exile ends | OneFootball

No excuses for the Tartan Army as they face Haiti in first match on football’s biggest stage since 1998

In a few hours’ time, a fleet of 20 chartered mustard-yellow school buses will travel from Boston into Massachusetts suburbia, carrying a small army of kilted Scots to a football match nearly three decades in the making.

It is 28 years since Scotland’s most recent World Cup fixture - a 3-0 defeat by Morocco in Saint-Etienne - and their longest-ever hiatus from the sport’s greatest tournament is now over, at long last.

Scotland’s bar for success at this competition is clear. In eight previous finals, they have never managed to escape the group stage.

Heading into the expanded 2026 edition, where a third-place finish should be sufficient to see them through, that is the bare minimum.

The oral history of Scotland on the global stage dictates that they simply have never quite been good enough to progress from the groups. They underperformed at France 98, drew a difficult group at Italia 90, and were eliminated on goal difference in 1982 in Spain.

There can be no such excuses this time around. This may not be a golden generation of Scottish footballers, but it is the strongest team the nation has produced for some time.

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It features a blend of solid domestic talents, the likes of new Rangers signing Lawrence Shankland, alongside European champions in John McGinn and Andy Robertson, plus biggest star Scott McTominay.

But, after a dramatic qualifying campaign saw Scotland wait until the absolute last moment to book their tickets to North America, nagging questions remain. Is this team over-reliant on its big-ticket players? And if they don’t perform, who will?

There are, in some ways, parallels to the Scotland teams of old, where the heroic efforts of Archie Gemmill and Kenny Dalglish were never enough to drag the Tartan Army to second place in a group.

And there are further concerning similarities in Scotland’s group rivals. Brazil and Morocco beat Scotland by a combined score of 5-1 as they were pushed on to an early flight home in 1998, and both feature prominently in Group C.

Haiti complete the group and will be Scotland’s first opponents of the summer, giving Steve Clarke a curious litmus test.

At first glance, the Haitians may appear Scotland’s best hope of three points. Head coach Sebastian Migne has never set foot in the country he represents, a Caribbean island fraught with political unrest and endemic poverty.

But on the pitch in Foxborough, they will be no pushovers. A well-drilled dark horse rich in top-flight talent, spearheaded by Sunderland’s Wilson Isidor, is carrying the hopes of a nation with little else to smile about.

The Haiti match is an opportunity for Scotland to lay down a marker before Morocco and Brazil tests

The form guide makes Haiti’s prospects rather more murky. Two pre-tournament friendlies produced a decisive 4-0 victory over New Zealand - a team England only beat 1-0 - and a concerningly flat 2-1 defeat by Peru, who failed to qualify for the World Cup.

Often set up in a stubborn 4-4-2 formation, they if nothing else will be difficult to beat, especially for a Scotland side light in attack.

This match is an opportunity for the Scots to lay down a marker and produce a performance worthy of the 28-year wait it necessitated.

“I was never under any illusion, it [is] going to be a tough game,” Clarke admitted of Haiti. “Big, strong physical… but also technical. They have good players who play in good leagues.”

But then, so too do Scotland, and they are also cursed with much higher expectations.

It may be 28 years since they last appeared at a World Cup, but it is 36 years since they last won a match at the tournament.

This is as good a time as any to end that barren spell. To succeed at the first hurdle may well be enough to see Scotland through to the promised land of the knockout rounds.