It was like watching your child’s team being creamed 15-0 by the pitiless big lads from the other side of town. Wincing on the sidelines, you’re aware only that you’ll have to take the poor souls home, comfort them and build them back up again.
On Wednesday night, sadly, it wasn’t schoolboy stuff. With horrible inevitability Scotland’s dreams imploded. The mighty Brazil, glittering as the gods of world football should, were always going to outclass a scratchy team struggling to breathe in the enervating humidity.
Of course it was delusional ever to think otherwise. But impossible dreams are what makes us human. As Brazil delivered a masterclass and Scotland a disasterclass, those of us stayed up to watch for the second time in five days dutifully shared the torture.
Scotland’s fate now hangs in the balance until the early hours of Sunday morning, relying on the intricacies of goal difference to decide whether the history they make is good or bad.
The hyperbole is exhausted. “Squeaky bumbum time” ran the headline in the Scottish edition of The Sun. A dispirited team will either get through to the knockout stages for the first time, or break the record for going to the World Cup the most times without getting past the first round.
An upset Steve Clarke told the BBC he expected to go home. You felt he couldn’t stand any more agony. It was ever thus. At Scotland vs Brazil in the 1982 World Cup the referee said “Good luck, may the best team win” to the captains before the game. Graeme Souness turned to Alan Rough and said: “I f—-ing hope not.” But denying physical supremacy means denying the laws of gravity.
We were thousands of miles away, sitting in our own stifling conditions, and when we saw Brazil’s apex predators padding around, terrifying in their physical grace, serene in their power, eyeing up their nervous prey as if they were tethered goats, we knew it was just a matter of time. We wailed as the Scots defence played kickabout. The moment of weakness, the fumble, it was coming. Brazil would strike.
In my local village pub in the Trossachs, for the second gruelling game in five days, only gallows humour sustained us. Everyone cheered when the game passed 71 seconds, the point at which Morocco had ended Scottish chances last week. Then Harry, who ran an amateur team for 20 years and knows the nature of suffering, punched the air and cried: “That’s five minutes gone and we haven’t lost a goal”.
Two minutes later Scotland defender Scott McKenna hesitated over a ball and the panther that is Vini Jnr, one of the stars in world football, swooped. pounced, mis-footed the goalkeeper and tapped it in. As easy as, well, killing that tethered goat.
In an exact repeat of last week, the air left the room, a universal exhalation of Scottish despair. We glanced at each other. Susan pulled a face. “Ach well,” sighed Janice. “Here comes a massacre of Glencoe proportions.”
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Football comes down to people, and despite the scoreboard people won
Football comes down to people, and despite the scoreboard people won
The conditions didn’t help. The Scots were out-classed but also out of oxygen, chests heaving in the soggy air, legs in slo-mo, unable to find refuge anywhere. It was awful to watch. Because I’m a soppy old thing, I can’t forget McKenna’s anguish. I hope social media allows him to get over the mistake.
At least he wasn’t alone. By the end of the game almost all his team-mates had also been found wanting, brave men who gave their all but fell short.
Errors by Jack Hendry and Andy Robertson, who appeared injured, allowed two more Brazil goals in the first half, although one was disallowed. In the glum of the Black Bull, the only roar of the night came when the scoreboard reversed to 1-0. Someone started a brief chant of “We love VAR, we love VAR”.
There’s a wry old adage that anyone can support a good team. Scotland has a population of six million. Brazil, my friends pointed out, has a population of more than 200 million: physically beautiful people, lithe and exotic, who live and breathe football. The Scots, er, aren’t like that.
By half time, although it was 1am, we were comfort-eating pizza and crisps. Afterwards Scotland created opportunities but Brazil were hardly out of third gear and scored again. The real thrill was the arrival in the 75th minute of the 34-year-old superstar Neymar, the old king strolling his court.
The Scots are fair, kind people. Harry decreed Scotland couldn’t have done much better. That was a typical performance – giving it everything but not having enough. Sandy said they made nervous mistakes they wouldn’t normally make. Billy said there was still a chance of going through. Janice cried: “Oh hell no.”
And so a proud little nation’s team did their utmost within their physical limits; as we’d reassure our children after those heavy losses, we know you did your best.
The Scottish comedian Kevin Bridges said in his recent TV documentary that so much of what makes football beautiful are the memories. Some would argue that whatever happens now, the Scots have already won this World Cup twice over. They won it when they beat Denmark in such style to qualify, they won it when they defeated Haiti – moments already in folklore. At the finish, when I saw the young player Finlay Curtis touch hands with Neymar I thought: there’s another bit of magic.
Memories too of the fans and their carnival of surreal fun, singing, statues decorated with traffic cones, ducks wearing Saltire flags, the stunned Boston publican (“What’s amazing is they drink so much beer and no one seems to get out of line”), the pipe bands, the shop called Jobi Liquors with an owner innocent of Glasgow’s scatological slang, the governor of Massachusetts wearing a Scotland strip.
Football comes down to people, and despite the scoreboard people won.
Photograph by Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images