Personally, I blame an Italian called Christian Panucci for my apathy
Apathy is a hell of a thing.
One day you’re 16 and heartbroken over Scotland’s failure to qualify for Euro 2000.
Then, 18 years later, you wake up and realise you’re a fat dad, who doesn’t give a monkeys that we’re not in Russia.
How did that happen?
At what point during this darkest of Scottish footballing dark ages did acceptance of failure become the norm?
It couldn’t have been after that first post-world Cup 98 stumble, when we dumped England at Wembley in the Euro 2000 play-offs and still missed the party?
That one really hurt.
So maybe it was the 2002 World Cup campaign – the one where Belgium (and that’s Bad Old Belgium rather than Good New Belgium, by the way) – beat us to second in the group, thanks to a last-minute equaliser at Hampden and an all-too-easy 2-0 win in Brussels?
No. That one was nasty too. What about Euro 2004 then? The one where we pipped Iceland to a play-off place, slayed Holland at Hampden, then made an iconic – even for Scotland – mess of our own pants in Amsterdam.
No way.
I remember watching that game in the pub, high on hope and cheap lager, allowing myself to dream that James Mcfadden and Darren Fletcher would lead us into a wildly successful future, chock-full of reasons to drink even more cheap lager.
But I also remember walking out of the boozer, shell-shocked and embarrassed when Ruud Van Nistelrooy made it 6-0 to Holland. So, you know, swings and roundabouts, innit?
Which leads us not-quite-asneatly-as-i’d-like (skipping the absolute disaster that was our World Cup 2006 campaign) to the stomach-churning rollercoaster that was our bid to reach the 2008 European Championships.
There, I think, lies the answer I’m searching for through this awful fog of time.
That campaign was both brilliant and horrendous, both euphoric and traumatic – like having your dreams stoked into a blazing inferno, then watching as Christian Panucci headers your screaming kids into the flames.
There’s just no coming back from that.
That’s when it all changed. The night when my subconscious mind took over, switched off the emotions, and turned me into this apathetic lump – and I don’t believe I’m alone.
After 20 years of failure, Scottish football fans get their major tournament jollies from watching England lose. Full stop.
It’s all we’ve been left with.
We are now at a point where the best feeling we can hope for during a World Cup is one so rottenhearted that only the Germans have bothered to come up with a word for it. Schadenfreude has become our bread and butter, our mince and tatties. We eat it up hungrily because there’s nothing else.
But it can’t sustain us, surely, for much longer?
The solution is as simple as it is complicated – produce a national team Scotland fans can be proud of.
But until it happens, I fear the apathy that settled on me years ago will continue its yawning, shrugging spread.