Reaching the Euros for the first time
At long last, we get round to one of the tournaments we actually qualified for.
You know how the European Championships is hideously bloated now with 24 teams, and Scotland still can't bloody qualify for it? Well, if you're younger than I am you won't even remember when only 8 countries were allowed to the show.
Euro 92 in Sweden was the last before expansion to 16 sides; it was also the first European Championship that Scotland qualified for, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Yugoslavia (the latter for non-footballing reasons, of course) didn't make it. We did.
The qualifying group itself doesn't look that impressive nowadays, but this was Gheorghe Hagi-era Romania, who had just been denied a World Cup quarter-final by a penalty shootout. They were the top seeds. Switzerland and Bulgaria were ascending. This was, incidentally, San Marino's first ever international qualifying campaign.
Not that it made much difference in this group, but this was the last campaign with two points for a win. Scotland would win just four of their eight qualifiers, two of which were their opening two matches at home to Romania and Switzerland. The other wins both came against San Marino. In some respects it could have gone even better - we were twice the victims of late Bulgarian equalizers and lost in Romania to a Hagi penalty.
But my first memory of watching the national team on TV was the first struggle against San Marino, a 2-0 win after a goalless first half (and a harbinger of many a slog against minnows to come over the decades). The second was the away game in Switzerland where Stephane Chapuisat put the home side ahead and the Swiss then won a corner. "Stop panicking," my father told the seven year old me. "Only about one in forty-two corners ever produces a goal". You can guess what happened next. And when you're seven years old no-one can ever come back from two-nil down.
Except we did. Gordon Durie scored right at the start of the second half and then Ally McCoist - who had been honking all game - toepoked in a rebound late on.
Losing to Romania in the next game knocked us out of the driving seat though and ultimately they had to win in Bulgaria in the final game of the group to qualify at our expense. There was irony in us needing a favour from the Bulgarians; a late goal in Sofia four years earlier had given Scotland a meaningless win that had denied the home side a place in the 1988 tournament.
In 1991, the only way to follow this was on Ceefax. Adrian Popescu induced panic over dinner in our household by giving Romania a half-time lead but Nasko Sirakov equalized for Bulgaria and Scotland were through.
As for the finals themselves, we gave the Dutch an almighty scare, losing to a late goal by a young sub named Dennis Bergkamp. Then we hardly disgraced ourselves in going down 2-0 to Germany where the second goal was a deflected cross, before scudding the CIS, as the former Soviet Union styled themselves, in the final game (scudding - get it? Because Scud missiles were Russian? Eh? Ach, I'm wasted on you lot). All in all it was a damn good effort and left my young self with somewhat inflated expectations of how good the national team should be...
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