World-class Scots had no one to fear
Nevin remembers Euro 92
THE summer of 1992 saw Pat Nevin score a mile-high goal, earn a spot in a Hollywood movie and joust with the world’s best on a broken ankle. During a typically mazy dribble down memory lane, the erstwhile winger recalls his one and only excursion to a major international tournament with relish and no little regret.
Simply by qualifying for the slimline European Championships in Sweden, Scotland had proved themselves one of the eight best teams on the continent.
Yet it was coach Andy Roxburgh’s rotten luck to find his side thrown in to a group featuring both the reigning world and European champions.
It was Denmark, late substitutes for a fracturing Yugoslavia, who would famously climb off the beaches and on to the winner’s podium in fairytale fashion.
To this day Nevin, 56, wonders what Scotland might have achieved with a more positive outlook.
Deployed as an impact substitute, Nevin believed he had the beating of Germany’s Andreas Brehme, scorer of the winning goal at Italia ’90 two summers earlier.
And when he looked around at team-mates Andy Goram, Richard Gough and Paul McStay, he had no doubts he was in world-class company.
That Scandinavian adventure was Scotland’s first-ever tilt at the Euros, four years ahead of their last and more commonly reprised outing at Euro ’96.
With a play-off challenge still outstanding, Nevin harbours hope that his old friend Steve Clarke might yet make it a hat-trick by guiding us to the postponed Euro 2020 edition.
With that tournament on ice and denied its scheduled opening ceremony in Rome this Friday, memories are all that sustain us for now.
Nevin’s tale had the Hollywood beginning, he just wishes the story had ended the same way…
THE BUILD-UP…
‘I HAD been out the squad for a wee while,’ begins Nevin. ‘I wasn’t getting on with Howard Kendall at Everton and Roxy told me I needed games to get into the squad.
‘I went to Tranmere Rovers on loan for two months and I got the shock of my life as they had a brilliant team with John Aldridge and six or seven others who went on to play in the Premier League.
‘Roxy came to see us and said he’d give me a chance.’
Scotland would ultimately top a tough qualifying group featuring Romania and Bulgaria — who would contest a World Cup quarter-final in 1994 — but made heavy weather of one of the easiest fixtures in the group.
‘We played San Marino away,’ recalls Nevin. ‘Remember that famous line from the journalist Ian Archer? “It just occurred to me that we are drawing 0-0 with a mountain top”. Class.
‘I came on and won us a penalty, which Gordon Strachan scored. So that was me back in the fold.’
In order to finalise his squad — UEFA’s rules permitted only 20 players in those days — Roxburgh took his men to North America for matches against the USA and Canada, the former game being played at altitude in Denver’s Mile High Stadium. Nevin passed the audition and made the movie. Trouble is, he followed the showbiz script too eagerly and ‘broke a leg’ in the process.
‘There were two or three places up for grabs,’ he says. ‘We beat the USA 1-0 in Denver and I scored.
‘It’s probably my funniest goal ever because it later appeared in the Mike Myers film So I Married An Axe Murderer. ‘This was in between the Wayne’s
World and Austin Powers movies that were so successful at the time.
‘In the scene, they’re crowded round the telly watching that goal and Myers shouts: “Move yer heid!” in that Scottish accent he liked so much.’
Ironically enough it was a heavy tackle from another Scot, the States’ Glasgow-born defender Dominic Kinnear, that set Nevin up for a painful summer.
‘I got hammered late in the game but didn’t know I had broken anything,’ says Nevin. ‘It was eventually diagnosed as a cracked tibia, but it didn’t show up in the initial X-ray. So I played with a break.
‘I just assumed it would clear up. I knew I could do the stuff I would specifically be asked to, all the dribbling.
‘I couldn’t strike the ball any distance but how often would I be asked to do that?
‘I’d missed the cut for Mexico ’86 and Italia ’90, so I wanted to get there.’
GOTHENBURG’S Ullevi Stadium was the stage for Rinus Michels’ tournament holders to open their defence of the trophy with the star AC Milan triumvirate of Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten to the fore.
As was his hallmark, Roxburgh’s preparation had been meticulous if not overly fussy. At the World Cup two years previously, he had allocated squad numbers based on experience and a repeat of that slightly odd decision saw striker Ally McCoist don the No5 shirt, while McStay pulled the midfield strings wearing No3.
Tactically, the manager opted for a cagey approach with the aim of securing a precious point.
In the end Dennis Bergkamp, playing in an advanced-midfield role, pounced on a knockdown from
Rijkaard to score the game’s only goal with just 15 minutes remaining.
‘I’ve always felt a degree of regret that we didn’t have more of a go,’ admits Nevin, himself allocated the unlucky 13 jersey and consigned to the role of unused sub on opening night. ‘We all have 20-20 vision in hindsight. We defended really well and, in another universe, we might have scraped a 0-0 and it would have been genius tactics.
‘But Roxy wasn’t really like that as a manger generally. He was normally more proactive.
‘Being sensible, Holland were defending champions, Germany seen as the best team in the world. So I get it.
‘But I looked round and felt we had a hell of a lot of good players. I saw no reason to stand off.
‘Do I wish we had a go at Holland and found out? Yes. But is there a possibility we would have lost 4-0? Absolutely!
‘But it was a one-off. When were we next going to get the opportunity?
‘The Dutch and Germans have something that we have never had. They know how to win tournaments.
‘And they utterly and totally have belief in themselves. To stand a chance against them, you need the same attitude.
‘That group of players had that feeling but maybe Roxy didn’t quite share it. It wasn’t until the second half against Germany that we really showed what we were all about.
‘By the time we were off the leash in the last game it was too late.’
TRIUMPHANT at Italia ’90, the Germans had lost manager Franz Beckenbauer and turned to future Scots boss Berti Vogts. On the field they retained a squad rich on star quality.
Although the scoreline suggests otherwise, Scotland gave the world champions a fright.
After shackling Van Basten in the first game, Gough was tasked with looking after Jurgen Klinsmann and again excelled. Instead, it was strike partner Karl-Heinz Riedle who opened the scoring before a deflected Stefan Effenberg shot eluded Goram and doubled the lead just after half-time.
And yet the balance of play was
not lop-sided. Staring an early exit in the face, Roxburgh let his team loose and sent on Nevin to run at the opposition.
‘I didn’t fear Germany,’ he recalls. ‘If your sub feels that way, what’s going through the starting players’ minds?
‘I remember going on against Andreas Brehme, and immediately thinking that while he was brilliant going forward he wasn’t a great defender. He was supposedly the best left-back in the world but he kept asking people to come out and help him.
‘Eventually they switched him over to the right.
‘My memory is that we had a good bunch of chances that day. Germany were on the edge, ready to topple and it just needed one of those opportunities to go in.
‘The ball just wouldn’t fall for Coisty. Had it done so, it would have gone in. It’s a shame because I would love to have really tested them. Guys like Brian McClair, McStay, Goughy and the Goalie. They’d all have felt the same way.
‘You don’t spend your whole time with top-level clubs trying to win things and then start worrying about Andreas Brehme.
‘I’m not sure Roxy felt quite the same way. Maybe he was more sensible.
‘I watched Paul McStay and thought he was as good as anyone. He could control games and very few players can do that.
‘And Goughy — I would have taken him ahead of any defender in that Germany team. Without even a moment’s hesitation.
‘He was better than any of them. They were all World Cup winners. He was genuinely world-class.
‘Not every player in our squad was of that standard but those two? Class.
‘People forget that Goughie had his absolute choice of clubs in England when he moved from Dundee United. Every single team would have taken him.
‘He had the personality and the ability of a winner. He was just as good at right-back or centre-back. Normally if I’m up against a full-back in that situation I’m thinking “part-time”. Not him.
‘He was a threat at the other end and he was also hard as nails.
‘Andy, too, was world-class. I don’t use the phrase lightly. The only two I played with at that level were him and Neville Southall.
‘If we had a weakness in that group, is that we weren’t quite ready to have a go in the early games. It was only in that second half against Germany that we really went for it.
‘We battered Germany in that second half. Crosses, chances we just couldn’t get the ball to go in. And then we were let off the leash against the CIS.’
ALL Scotland’s luck arrived in one sudden gush. First, McStay’s full-blooded 20-yard shot hit the post, bounced off the back of Dmitri Kharine’s head and ran over the line.
Then, Manchester United’s McClair, capped 25 times without a goal, struck a shot that deflected its way past the keeper for No 2.
Scotland were already out but this was no dead-rubber match. Managed by Anatoliy Byshovets, who would later turn up at Hearts as sporting director, this last temporary incarnation of the old Soviet Union had forced draws against the Dutch and Germans and were still in the hunt for a place in the semis.
‘They weren’t a team waltzing about, they needed to beat us,’ says Nevin. ‘But we absolutely battered them. Maybe if the fixtures had came out differently, we’d have stood a better chance of going through.
‘Had we beat the CIS in our first match, it would definitely have changed the mindset.
‘It would have been nice to play our last game against Germany or Holland knowing we needed a win to get through.’
Again, Nevin had to wait until late in the match for his chance to shine but he made an imprint on the match by winning the penalty for Gary McAllister’s clinching goal.
‘There is footage of me running the length of the pitch before being tripped up and there is a reason for that,’ he adds.
‘The type of fissure crack I had didn’t allow me to put my foot though the ball. I couldn’t kick the ball more than 20 yards, so I had to dribble.
‘I could run, I could twist and turn and do the tiki-taka passing, but I couldn’t take a corner I was in so much pain.’
Come full-time, Nevin made a beeline for the dressing rooms only to be redirected by his manager.
‘I was walking off with Gary McAllister and we were annoyed because we were out,’ says Nevin.
‘I’ve played for Chelsea and Everton. He’s at Leeds, later at Liverpool. We play to win.
‘Roxy’s telling us to go and applaud the fans and we’re saying: “What do you want to do that for, you don’t celebrate going out”.
‘Roxy insisted, so we all went over and it was so much the right the thing to do. The fans had stuck with us and knew the efforts we had put in.
‘I think that is when the Tartan Army changed. There was a real coming together between the supporters and the players. That had never happened before.
‘Roxy and Craig Brown had worked hard to try and get this and earlier in the tournament we went down to the encampment where all the fans were staying, just to talk to them all. It was great.
‘Think back to 1978 when there was a big schism between the fans and the team. Jock Stein made strides to improve things but Euro ’92 was the first time it felt like a proper club environment.
‘The fans knew it had been a tough group, so there was no embarrassment.
‘Looking back, we were not out of place at that tournament. Had it been the other group, you never know… the Danes didn’t do too badly.’ THE FALL-OUT….
EURO ’92 was a watershed moment for the international game.
The break-up of both Yugoslavia and the old Soviet Union spawned a clutch of new European football nations whose very presence reduced Scotland’s chances of qualification for any major tournament.
That team was to crumble too. Gough soon fell out with Roxburgh, while injuries took a toll on both Goram and McStay as the years rolled on.
After failing to make USA ’94, Roxburgh handed the baton to Craig Brown, who astutely guided the team to the Euros in England and the France ’98 World Cup.
Even as the Euros has expanded three-fold to accommodate 24 finalists we have not graced a tournament in 22 years.
‘The opposition has improved and there are more teams,’ muses Nevin, who won the last of his 28 caps against Australia in March ’96.
‘The coaching has improved, the smaller nations are better organised and I don’t think we have as big a pool of players.
‘We have a few at the moment — Andy Robertson, wee Billy Gilmour and Scott McTominay at Manchester United.
‘John McGinn is going to be good enough, too. Give him a run of 15-20 international games and people will be scared of him.
‘Nobody in the Premier League can put up with him as it is.
‘So we have something. But for 20 years there has always been a hole. It’s a bit like putting your finger in the dyke... if we sort the midfield, the issue might be at centre-back.
‘In ’92 we had that spine of Goram, Gough, McStay and McCoist. Strikers were never a problem for us back then.
‘Now? We’ve got two world-class left-backs in Robertson and Kieran Tierney and we’re trying to manipulate that situation.
‘We are having to make do and mend a wee bit.’
Nevin believes the SFA have enhanced their chances of success by installing his old Chelsea colleague Clarke.
He adds: ‘I can’t see him making any stupid mistakes. He is damned honest and players love that.
‘He is a proper training-ground coach and they will respond to that too. He will maximise the potential of the squad. But will it be enough?’
‘I’VE ALWAYS FELT A DEGREE OF REGRET THAT WE DIDN’T HAVE MORE OF A GO. OUR PLAYERS HAD REAL BELIEF BUT MAYBE ROXY DIDN’T QUITE SHARE IT’