From Faroes humiliation to Wembley heroics
If only a less agile keeper than David Seaman had been facing that Christian Dailly header. No-one doubts that, had the second leg of that playoff against England gone to extra time that we would have won it. That 1-0 win was a performance for the ages but was ultimately worth jack because of Paul Scholes' double at Hampden. Still, it might be the most excited I have ever been watching a football match.
Would you believe that, when the groups were drawn, Scotland were not only amongst the top seeds but ranked sixth in Europe? The system they used - based on the qualification campaigns for Euro 96 and France 98 - put us ahead of World Champions France, World Cup semi-finalists Croatia and World Cup quarter finalists Italy and Denmark. Crazy, huh?
In some ways Scotland were unfortunate that they were drawn against a Czech Republic side containing some of the top players in Europe at that time. On the flipside the rest of the group was dreadfully weak. And we still did our best to make a pig's ear of it.
It would have been a lot worse but for the form of Billy Dodds. After being held 0-0 in Lithuania (back when a goalless draw in the Balkans was considered an awful result), Dodds got us out of jail at home to the dreaded Estonians who led twice before Dodds' brace gave the hosts a 3-2 win. He was on target again against the Faroes - more on them later - but was, along with nearly every Scottish striker in existence at that point, injured when the Czechs came to town. Eoin Jess played up top and scored, but we lost 2-1 and the match became notorious for Gary McAllister getting booed when he was subbed. McAllister, not long back from the ACL injury that ruled him out of the World Cup, retired from international football immediately. It was not a proud moment for the Tartan Army.
Things only got worse, as Matt Elliott got himself stupidly sent off in the Faroes, leaving Scotland to defend a 1-0 lead with 10 men for the second half. They lasted 41 minutes but at that point the Faroes' late equalizer left the visitors with arguably the worst result in their history. They came flying out of the blocks a few days later in Prague but blew a 2-0 lead after running out of legs and getting ragdolled by the huge sub Jan Koller, going down 3-2.
Thankfully the Dodds-Don Hutchison combo got us a win in Bosnia which, with everyone else taking points off each other, essentially made sure of second. But the England game disguised an awful lot of deficiencies that would come to light in the next campaign...and which perhaps have never been corrected.
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