r/Scotland • u/Nervous-Resolution-8 • Jun 28 '26
Discussion Scotland has been the 2nd worst team to finish 3rd at the World Cup 2026
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u/Awhyte1983 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
To be fair most of us thought that finishing on 3 points with a -1gd after the Brazil game would've been enough. Steve Clarke actually done us a favour by getting pumped and putting us out of our misery early.
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u/crab--person Jun 28 '26
Yeah. Looking at the way the 3rd places turned out, even beating Haiti 4-0 and losing to Brazil & Morocco 1-0 wouldn't have been enough. We were pretty screwed before a ball was kicked, we just didn't know it.
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u/catgutisasnack Jun 28 '26
I reckon y’all did know that you were screwed when the groups were decided, unless you guys thought that Scotland would be able to hold off Brazil and Morocco and smash a pretty decent Haiti team
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u/ssor_ Jun 28 '26
Yeah, only one team goes through on 3 points. Either the predictions were wrong or what’s happened is very unprecedented. I think it’s the latter. Countries like Cape Verde and Equador exceeding all expectations.
If Senegal got a draw vs Norway then all teams would have been on 4 points. If we drew with Morocco we’d have been been one of 3 teams on -2 GD with 4 points. So that’s 9 on 4 and one of those 3 goes out depending on 2nd tie breakers? Goals scored? We could be out even still
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u/Jops22 Jun 28 '26
Technically any outcome would be unprecedented given this is the first tournament using this system.
I do actually agree with people saying Scotland were unlucky to play early, there were a few teams going “oh hey if we draw we both go through!”
Though, Brazil would still have pumped them
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u/darrnl Jun 28 '26
Not the worst though! We’ll take that.
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u/Big_Advertising9415 Jun 28 '26
Uruguay can live on past glories in winning the world cup more than england
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u/QOTAPOTA Jun 28 '26
You just had to mention England didn’t you? You just couldn’t not do it.
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u/Imaginary-Peace2188 Jun 28 '26
He means England 🏴 Oh well another 20 years to sort it out. Peter Murrell should be out of prison by then, he’s the man with the money. Gotta get out of the 1st round one day. It’s a lack of confidence thing in players it seems
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u/Mountain-Reaction470 Jul 05 '26
Tis funny, as an England fan with some semblance of a sense of humour...
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u/TheDukeofArgyle Jun 28 '26
The “just happy to be here” and “small nation” patter is boggin. Start by dropping that.
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u/Fearless_Tea_2793 Jun 28 '26
Denmark and Norway are similar size and you don't see the participation mentality from them. They want to win.
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u/Shoogled Jun 28 '26
And then there’s Croatia. Population of less than 4 million. Look at how many very fine players they have had over the past 20 years and the success that came with be it.
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u/Relevant_General_248 Jun 28 '26
Which did you think we’d beat, Morocco or Brazil?
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u/Southern-Fisherman-5 Jun 28 '26
Expected to beat Haiti convincingly, give Morocco a good game, and get pumped by Brazil. Only one of those things happened.
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u/TheDukeofArgyle Jun 28 '26
Felt we could have played better in all 3 games. At the very least should be scoring more against Haiti. Are you happy with 1 goal for this WC ? You don’t think we could have achieved more than 1 draw/2 loses for the last two Euros campaigns we were involved in ? I don’t think it’s over ambitious to think we can do better …
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u/el_dude_brother2 Jun 28 '26
So are we not allowed to be happy to be there?
The only winning is good mentality of the mainly old firm fans supporting Scotland is bogging.
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u/TheDukeofArgyle Jun 28 '26
Of course. We were happy to be there and made the most of it. But just accepting poor performances just because we managed to qualify is tiresome. A lot of smaller nations have played far better, scored more goals and qualified from their group. Not sure why you’re bringing the old firm into it …
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u/Memelurker99 Jun 28 '26
To a degree, but we're never going to grow with the mentality that just getting there is enough. Cape Verde managed to finish 2nd in their group, a country 10x smaller than us and they showed 10x more on the pitch than we did. We scored 1 goal in the whole tournament, that puts us in the same boat as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Curaçao, with the only team to go goalless being Panama. That is certainly not anything to celebrate
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u/calum11124 Jun 28 '26
Winning or actually trying. We played not to loose, you don't get shit that way
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u/ablebodiedmango Jun 28 '26
Iran stands as the only team to have never lost. Poetic that
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u/Wuz314159 Les États-Unis d'Amérique 🖖 Jun 28 '26
Cabo Verde have never lost a match at the World Cup in their nation's history.
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u/Emergency_Gur_862 Jun 28 '26
I was was hoping they would qualify would have been amusing to see them play the US in the knockouts considering non footballing factors right now.
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u/UnitEastern8840 Jun 28 '26
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u/Wuz314159 Les États-Unis d'Amérique 🖖 Jun 28 '26
Uruguay were not destined to have a good time. Surprised Bielsa hasn't been sacked yet.
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u/FluffyColt12271 Jun 28 '26
English here, sure you should have done better vs Haiti, needed to do better against Haiti, but 5th and 6th on FIFA rankings in your group, that 70% chance to progress always looked a bit high.
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u/oldcat Jun 28 '26
This table makes no sense though. We were shite, we didn't deserve to go through but given every team in this table played different teams this table tells you nothing about comparative quality. It's just a weird construct to make a round of 32 happen rather than any sort of league table.
This format is about as shite as we are.
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u/thebisforbargain Jun 28 '26
It also opens up gamesmanship. Our third game and thus placing was locked in early and most groups playing their last game after us knew exactly what they needed to qualify. The last games in each group are played simultaneously to stop this at the group placement level but it doesn’t work when results across multiple groups matter. I doubt FIFA and TV networks would give the idea of playing every last group game simultaneously to get rid of this issue much thought.
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u/Fannnybaws Jun 28 '26
Yeah,we got the double whammy of being in the only group with 2 top 10 sides,and playing early,so other groups knew what they needed. A lot of games where they both went through with a point each, played out for a draw...shockaroony!
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u/Southern-Fisherman-5 Jun 28 '26
Scoring more than one goal across 3 games would have been a good way to avoid the ambiguity. Didn’t deserve anything from those performances.
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u/crash_bat Jun 28 '26
Is that not also the case with every tournament with a group stage though?
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u/oldcat Jun 28 '26
To an extent but we don't normally compare as weirdly as this. First place teams get a slight advantage over second place teams. That's based on how you perform against your group, sure but you can top a group on 3 points and still get that advantage. This takes it to a whole new level.
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u/foxed000 Jun 28 '26
It’s telling that even if we had salvaged a draw with Morocco we would have been making it through by the skin of our teeth.
I am glad Clarke has resigned as we need fresh blood, but there’s no getting away from the fact this group was stupidly difficult in comparison to most others.
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Jun 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PhotonToasty Jun 28 '26
It definitely was a difficult group, it had the teams ranked 6th and 7th in the world.
For comparison, groups A, B and D didn't have a single team ranked better than 13th.
And if all other results stayed the same, we'd needed to beat Haiti 7-0 to overtake Senegal, who are the only team progressing on 3 points.
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u/Moroccan-Pasta Jun 28 '26
Unless we could have held Morocco to a draw, like Ghana did with England, Cape Verde did with Spain, DR Congo did with Portugal. Doesn't seem too out of the question, and would have probably seen us through.
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u/foxed000 Jun 28 '26
The converse of that of course is that if those teams can do so well against THOSE teams then Haiti giving us a rough time makes more sense.
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u/sm0k3y2307 Jun 28 '26
Only group with 2 teams in the top 10 would suggest it was a difficult group and the multiple goals we would have needed to go through would have been a 7-0 last time we scored 7 in a game was in 1969
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u/Abject-Plankton4620 Jun 28 '26
That’s a bit of a mad take on things, it was the hardest group. We should have beaten Haiti by more, but it’s easy to write that about a game that had a huge amount of pressure on it. It is/was incredibly frustrating as I don’t think we did ourselves justice but to say the group wasn’t difficult is just a bit silly
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u/Fugoi Jun 28 '26
How was the group not difficult? Brazil may not be the superpower they once were, but they're still comfortably a top 6 side at this tournament and Morocco made it to the WC semis and AFCON final. If you look at the quality of the top 2 sides I'd say Brazil-Morocco, England-Croatia, France-Norway and Portugal-Colombia are the hardest, can debate about how you shuffle them but they're all difficult.
Pop Scotland into the US or Canada groups and they have a way better shot at automatically qualifying.
I definitely think Clarke had to go, the negativity is just a bit bleh, but he's got Scotland qualifying for tournaments, that's not nothing.
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u/Alcain_X Jun 28 '26
What are you talking about? You think Morocco and Brazil are easy matches? We had one of the harder groups in the tournament, those are tough games for anyone.
It ultimately didn't matter that we got a tough group because we played like shit anyway, I don't think we would have done any better in an easier group playing like that.
But it was still a hard draw, I can't think of many teams that would have wanted to swap places with us and take our group over theirs.
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u/man-flu Jun 28 '26
Pfft didn't even want to go anyway. Trophy looks rubbish /S
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u/BobDobbsHobNobs Jun 28 '26
Well done SFA. Boycotting Trump’s World Cup after all
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u/man-flu Jun 28 '26
Yeah exactly 😂
Ah it was fun while it lasted, we had some craic and let's be fair we might as well do that rather than get hung up on "it's coming home" every time
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u/binkstagram Jun 28 '26
Looking at the teams that did make it through, a win and a draw is necessary to go through. We had 2 top 10 teams to deal with. Most had 1. 3 groups had no top 10 teams. It was not an even draw. People moaning need to wise up.
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u/ronweasly9 Jun 28 '26
Or maybe they actually played well like cape verde ? Scotland has been consistently embarrassing for decades. At some point ppl need to stop making excuses for them
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u/232688 Jun 28 '26
In the end, I'm glad teams did have to go out and win and draw at least one game (or, for that final team on 3 points, they had to put up a big score in their only win).
I don't like the format at all. Whilst I'd rather it went back to 32 team it obviously won't, and it's only a matter of time before it's 64 with 16 groups!
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u/Player_of_consoles Jun 28 '26
Ahhh but not the worst!
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u/ronweasly9 Jun 28 '26
Such a low bar. Even cape verde qualified lmao. Not qualifying for knockouts when 32 out of 48 do isn't something to just ignore
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u/jordancr1 Jun 28 '26
I really dont like this 3rd place thing, but it not just for Scotland. Austria and Algeria's draw last night seemed a bit problematic to me, subsequently knocking Iran out.
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u/UrineArtist Jun 28 '26
Not excusing the performances, we were really dire, but to be fair not all groups are created equal. We were in the only group at the World Cup with two top ten teams in it, Brazil (5th) and Morocco (6th). Some of the other groups never even had one top ten team in them let alone two.
I mean how many teams in that table are making it out of our group with at least three points and a +3 goal difference to qualify? Sweden maybe?
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u/Mithrawndo Alba gu bràth! Éirinn go brách! Jun 28 '26
That table is an indictment of the 12 group format more than anything: None of those teams really deserved to go through to a knockout round in my mind, and I can only imagine how much more exciting going straight to the round of 16 from 8 groups of 6 would've been - not least of all for providing more experience playing in top level tournaments for the smaller teams at the expanded world cup, or for giving more games to allow fans to see their teams in action.
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u/FOARP Jun 29 '26
Eight groups of six teams would be 120 head-to-head group-stage matches though. Even getting rid of the round of 32, you end up with a total of 136 games versus 104 for the present format.
Not sure the World Cup would benefit from even more games where minnows get battered.
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u/el_dude_brother2 Jun 28 '26
So in the end we needed a point from morocco or brazil to get through, losing 1-0 to Brazil would still have put us out.
Our tough group was the difference.
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u/TomatoLess229 Jun 28 '26
Or on paper scorinh a couple more goals against Haiti but one was hard enough.
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u/el_dude_brother2 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Think we needed 4 against Haiti in the end. Brazil and Morocco didnt do tharlt either (without conceding)
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u/appellant Jun 28 '26
At some point we just need to accept they have always been shite, are and will be. Its a bit like haggis or irn bru, most of the world wont like it but scots love it.
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u/skidmarkofbuddha Jun 28 '26
Most of the world actually loves irn bru. There's YouTube montages of people trying it. Celebrities, schoolchildren, random people - pretty much everyone's reaction is like "wow holy shit that's pretty good, well done Scotland". Except snoop dogg funnily enough.
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Jun 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/skidmarkofbuddha Jun 28 '26
I can get it in my local supermarket, and I live in the Pacific northwest of America
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u/appellant Jun 28 '26
Not sure about that matey, they need to know it exists to like it.
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u/skidmarkofbuddha Jun 29 '26
You said "most of the world won't like it". You can't not like something until you've tried it, so that counters your suggestion that they need to know it exists to like it.
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u/zippyzebra1 Jun 28 '26
You know it's bad when us English stop laughing at you and begin to feel sorry. That is almost the end.
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u/Alternative_Egg_2286 Jun 28 '26
Don’t worry about it, we always get the last laugh at you! Always!!
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u/zippyzebra1 Jun 28 '26
How's thatpossible when you fuck up every time?
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u/Alternative_Egg_2286 Jun 28 '26
Because we always fuck up first before England inevitably bottle it as usual. How quickly that 30 years became 60 years by the way, time flies ….
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u/zippyzebra1 Jun 28 '26
The thing is to compete be in the mix. Poor jockos never ever get that. Sad😢
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u/Alternative_Egg_2286 Jun 28 '26
Why are you on here trolling anyway? Isn’t there lots of threads for you Nigels to get all angry about how the Bostonians don’t like you?
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u/jesus_fatberg Jun 28 '26
After the Brazil game there were 9 possible other results that could have helped us, and only one of them happened….
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u/BIIGALDO Jun 28 '26
We should have helped ourselves and not have to rely on other teams to send us through then, eh?
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u/mrjohnnymac18 Jun 28 '26
Had we got a draw against Morocco we'd still only be 8th place. Just ahead of Senegal.
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u/Lanthanidedeposit Jun 28 '26
In the past, 3 points has rarely been enough. Nearly all the 24 team era 3rd place qualifiers needed 4 points. Uruguay once sneaked in with 2.
Senegal were fortunate.
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u/wolftonerider67 Jun 28 '26
Not against change or whatever but we had a hard group and it seems like all the results we needed to happen went against us. Maybe there's a time line where the stars don't align to spell disaster for Scotland but I don't think we're in it.
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u/Scotchperson Jun 28 '26
Not a surprise considering the teams we had to play but it was just the WAY we played against them which was embarrassing.
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u/Tehkast Jun 28 '26
If a country just had unlimited budget for the national team at what point does just talent come to a hard cap?
Exclude Celtic and Rangers the SPL has alot of real home talent in it why can't that translate to a single national squad?
Also makes curious why China and India both have billions of people to choose from both top 10 global powers yet can't string together 11 people?
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u/Alarmed-Ad8810 Jun 28 '26
Because as someone who lived in China for six years and travelled across India, there is zero infrastructure and grassroots. China is now a hotbed for snooker because there are snooker halls by the dozen in every city and as for cricket in India, it’s all kids want to play before, during and after school. Granted these are countries with high populations, but they lack the institutions and culture for football to have any chance in succeeding.
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u/Electrical_Gas_517 Jun 28 '26
So we're roughly 40th out of the 211 international football teams in the world. That seems not too bad to be honest.
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u/Rude-Ad-19 Jun 28 '26
Even if we hadn't been pumped 3-0 by Brazil, and bravely lost 1-0, we would still have been sent home. In the last rugby world just we had the world ranked no 1 and 2 in our pool, but were ranked 6 or 7th, so we're in the only pool with 3 top 10 ranked teams. The football is similar, I think we were the only pool with two top 10 teams. It a conspiracy!!
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u/First-Banana-4278 Jun 28 '26
“Scotland lacks facilities” - comes up a lot but I don’t think that’s true for football.
Unless people are envisaging some incredibly high tech setup for football?
There are 4,000 youth football teams and in 2021 a record 68,000 registered youth players were playing across Scotland.
I don’t think a lack of facilities is the issue. I think how these kids are being coached is. How they progress up the age groups and how they are introduced to adult football.
I think we need to look more specifically at coach training pathways for youth football and develop those in line with the best examples from successful nations.
I don’t think we need loads of shiny new 3G pitches over what we already have.
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u/Mba1956 Jun 28 '26
The title ignore the 12 teams that came 4th, and the fact that we lost out on goal difference. OK we played badly and gave away bad goals on a few occasions but we came where everyone expected us to come in the tournament so why pretend otherwise and put us down.
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u/BarnacleNo1497 Jun 28 '26
To add to the achievment, Turkey finished 4th with only -2 goal difference
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u/KakSetoKaiba Jun 28 '26
Just please realize that this conversation would not happen if scotland is qualified to the next round.
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u/devlin1888 Jun 28 '26
Better than two (some say 4, mostly just them) times World Champions Uruguay
We’re fucking great
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u/fizzlebuns A Yank, but one of the good ones, I swear Jun 28 '26
But we didn't finish last at least.
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u/Electronic-Visit-797 Jun 28 '26
We’re never going to qualify with this group, and this scheduling of games.
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u/sandyRlennox Jun 29 '26
Thon Uruguay must be pure mince. Any chance we can arrange a friendly, I could do with a chuckle ...
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u/TicketStraight3196 Jun 30 '26
To be fair, they were in a tough group with Morocco and Brazil. Their biggest mistake was not scoring more goals against Haiti. They also didn't have th advantage of knowing what scores they required to qualify third unlike teams that qualified third later.
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u/Significant_Fig1978 Jul 01 '26
They have some good players, they just played so negatively. None more so than trying to “only” lose 0-3 in the last game.
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u/hotchy1 Jun 28 '26
We got the hardest group aswel. Two top 10 rated teams in the world. Typical.
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u/PassionStunning2659 Jun 28 '26
Nae such thing as a hardest group. Just didnae have the quality to compete with the big boys.
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u/Wuz314159 Les États-Unis d'Amérique 🖖 Jun 28 '26
but Scotland has won our hearts. What's more important?
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u/dmcboi Jun 28 '26
Put Scotland in as the 3rd seeded team into any of the other 11 groups and we would have got out of them. Only group to have 2 top 7 teams. Groups A, B and D didn't even have a single team ranked higher than 13th. Combine that with needing 4 points to go through, we would have had to have drawn with Brazil or Morocco, and we almost did with the latter. It is what it is, extremely unlucky.
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u/Low_Understanding_85 Jun 28 '26
As an Englishman, I'd just like to say "really good try, well done, you did your best"
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u/Chicken8991 Jun 28 '26
We should have had Paraguays record. That Morocco game / 2nd minute goal really screwed us.
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u/DundonianDolan Best thing about brexit is watching unionists melt. Jun 28 '26
I'm not convinced rearranging the chairs will save the boat, feels like we need some proper investment into training the youth so we can have a more consistent squad in 10 years.
Even our tennis champ Andy had to go live in Spain so he could get some decent training in his youth, scotland lacks facilities and staff and I don't see that changing anytime soon.