The 900 Club

Scotland travel to Lisbon, Portugal for match day two of the UEFA Nation League 2024/25 campaign, off the back of a very frustrating night at Hampden on Thursday.

To give Poland a 2-0 half time lead was massively disappointing, even if we had been a bit unlucky with the handball ruling out what would have been an equaliser for 1-1. Individual mistakes cost us possession which led to the first goal as Grant Hanley’s pass to Billy Gilmour was terrible, and a silly penalty conceded by Anthony Ralston after little to no challenge from several other Scotland players in the build up cost us the second goal.

The flying start to the second half brought us back into it through Billy Gilmour’s second Scotland goal, and the substitutions helped to change the shape of the team and get us level in the game, particularly with Ben Doak combining with Ralston combining to set up Scott McTominay to score the equaliser.

That all had us believing we might even get an unlikely win… only for more stupid mistakes with Ralston sliding about and getting nothing and then Hanley conceding a second entirely needless penalty. So instead of a draw and maybe even a win, we ended up with nothing after losing at the death.

That 3-2 defeat leaves us sitting third in the table after what was debatably our easiest of the three home games in Nations League A. Next up comes debatably our hardest game, with a visit to early leaders Portugal, who beat Croatia 2-1 in their opening game at home.

Let’s start with the bad news. Our record in Portugal is really not great. Although we’ve played Portugal 15 times, won four, drawn three and lost eight… all four wins and two of the three draws came in home games. Our only draw in Portugal came in the very first meeting of the two sides back in May 1950 where Willie Bauld and Allan Brown scored in a 2-2 draw at the Estadio Nacional in Lisbon – a stadium which would become far more significant in Scottish history 17 years later of course.

We haven’t been to Portugal since November 2002, where Pauleta scored both goals in a 2-2 friendly defeat in Braga.

Our last visit to tonight’s venue, the Estadio de Luz in Lisbon, was not for the faint hearted. A 5-0 thrashing in April 1993 and a game where Ally McCoist broke his leg put an end to whatever slip hopes we still had of qualifying for the World Cup in USA in 1994. Two goals each from Rui Barros and Jorge Cadete, with Paulo Futre getting in on the action as well.

Our other competitive visits to Portugal have seen us lose 2-0 in April 1971, a Pat Stanton own goal and a goal from Eusebio beating us that day. Then in November 1978 we lost 1-0 to an Alberto Fonseca goal. And in November 1981 we lost 2-1, Manuel Fernandes scoring twice after Paul Sturrock had given us an early lead. No footage of any of these though.

To complete our record in Portugal, in a friendly in June 1959 we lost 1-0 courtesy of a goal from Matateu in the Jose Alvalade stadium – that’s Sporting’s ground in Lisbon rather than Benfica’s. No footage of this one either.

So I started with the bad news, what’s the good news? Well… I’m not sure there is any. Cristiano Ronaldo has already hit his 900th goal on Thursday night, so that’s a landmark he’s no longer aiming to hit. I’m sure he’ll be aiming to get even more though. Wouldn’t put it past him to think he can get to 1000, despite his age probably being against him at this point in his career.

If we’re going to do anything in this Nations League campaign, we’re likely going to need to try and get something tonight. Lose, and we’ll be six points off the Portuguese pace and could be six points off second spot depending on what happens in Croatia where Poland will be the visitors. We definitely don’t want to be six points behind a Poland team who will have played two of their three away games!

But if we are to get anything, we’ll need to cut out the mistakes we made on Thursday night. Steve Clarke wanted to focus on the positives from the Poland game, which I understand but does feel a bit blinkered. However he did also note that individual mistakes cost us, so it will be interesting to see what changes he makes for this next match to try and deal with that. You would think one or two places in the starting lineup would change, and you would also wonder if the shape of the team will more resembles how the game ended than how it started.

Whatever we go with, we need to learn the lessons and fast. With only six games in a campaign, you can’t afford to be playing catch up. Any more than we could afford to be playing catch up as we did at half time on Thursday night.

Good luck to Scotland tonight, you feel like we might just need it!