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Improving the Playoff Record

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For the second time in just a few days, all eyes will be on Easter Road. Sunday saw the first Edinburgh derby of the season take place in the men’s game, but now it’s home for Scotland once more as they look to build on the first leg of the Euro 2025 playoff semi final against Hungary. Scotland go into this second leg with a narrow 1-0 lead thanks to Martha Thomas yet again getting on the scoresheet in this campaign.

Martha’s goal is her sixth in Euro 2025 qualifying, and indeed only Lara Prasnikar of Slovenia has more. It does help that she got four against Israel!

In fairness, Martha is joint second with Lea Schuller of Germany, and Armisa Kuc and Saldana Bulatovic both of Montenegro. We could still face both of them, although that would involve Montenegro winning in Finland tonight as they lost the home leg of their playoff semi final 1-0 at home on Friday afternoon. Linda Sallstrom getting the goal in the third minute of that match. Can’t find highlights from this one, but YouTube seems to have streams from the full game if you’re that interested!

We’ll know who is waiting in the final by the time we kick off as the game in Finland has a 4.30pm oor time kick off. The game at Easter Road is a 7.35pm kick off and it’s live on the BBC Scotland channel if you can’t get along to the game.

As I hinted at last week, there’s not a whole lot else to say about tonight’s match that I haven’t already said. The one I held back was Hungary’s only previous visit to Scotland. That came in World Cup 2023 qualifying at Hampden, and saw Rachel Corsie get a late winner after Christy Grimshaw had given Scotland the lead but Fanni Vago had equalised.

Should Scotland progress, no one is quire sure when the two legged final will be. We know it will be between 22nd November and 3rd December, but the exact dates are still to be confirmed by UEFA.

Scotland’s record in the playoffs isn’t the best if we’re honest. In Euro 2009 qualifying, the first time we made the playoffs, we lost on away goals to Russia as the aggregate score was 4-4 but they’d won 3-2 at Tynecastle. Pauline Hammill twice giving us the lead on for Russia to peg us back both times and eventually get a winner. It was Hammill who got both goals in Russia in the second half as well, but it just wasn’t enough as an Ifeoma Dieke own goal in the first half had made a difficult task even harder.

In Euro 2013 qualifying, it took extra time for Spain to see us off. Kim Little gave us the lead in the first leg at Hampden but the game finished 1-1 as Spain equalised a few minutes later.

This pattern unfortunately followed in the second leg too as frustratingly we were winning in both regular time through Emma Mitchell (now Mukandi) and in extra time through Kim Little, but Spain equalised both times. Even then, we were still heading for victory on away goals in extra time but Spain scored with the last kick of the ball, two minutes into injury time, and progressed to the Euros at out expense.

For Euro 2017, the only previous time we’ve qualified for the Euros, we skipped the playoffs. It was only the two lowest second placed teams that had to go through that. We were the best second placed team, so all good there!

Even if you add in World Cup qualifying it doesn’t get any better. World Cup 2015 saw us in the top four of the runners up so enough to get us into the playoffs as the bottom four didn’t make the cut, but we were the third best so we weren’t seeded and lost 4-1 on aggregate to the Netherlands. Kim Little getting our only goal of the tie in the first leg at Tynecastle, but it was from the penalty spot when we were already 2-0 down.

The 2019 World Cup where we did qualify, again Scotland didn’t need the playoffs as we topped our qualifying group and went straight into the tournament. This is definitely the better way to go!

Most recently, the 2023 World Cup saw us reach the playoffs and this time we did actually win a tie as we beat Austria 1-0 after extra time thanks to Abi Harrison.

But despite hosting that semi final and the final which followed, it was the Republic of Ireland that went to the World Cup as they beat us 1-0 at Hampden.

Hopefully tonight is the start of changing out luck in the playoffs. Finish off the job against Hungary, which despite Pedro Martinez Losa’s confidence in saying there’s no way we won’t win this tie will still be a difficult prospect to get over the line, and then we can face another tough prospect after that.

But for now, good luck to Scotland tonight in Edinburgh!

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