Paul looks back to the day Scots lost World final
Tomorrow will be the 30th anniversary of the day Scotland were cheated in a World Cup Final.
On June 24, 1989, the country’s Under16 side – including the likes of Paul Dickov, Brian O’neil and Gary Bollan, and led by Craig Brown – went down in a penalty shoot-out to a Saudi Arabia side memorably described by The Sunday Post’s Doug Baillie as containing plenty of “old heads on old shoulders”. A couple of decades on, former SFA secretary, Ernie Walker, claimed one of the Saudi players had been an army captain and a married father of three at the time of the game!
He was furious as he believed it was clear the winners had simply picked the best players they had available, and then doctored their passports so they were eligible to take part. A modern-day equivalent would see Scotland rolling back the clock for stars such as Andy Robertson and Callum Mcgregor to drop them into a youth tournament.
Photographs of the time show a majority of the Saudis sporting full moustaches on faces markedly lacking the youthful bloom of their Scottish counterparts.
“It was so bad, it was a joke to us,” said Dickov, Scotland’s star striker and the scorer of a fine goal in regulation time. “Hampden Park was heaving because our run had really captured the imagination of the entire country.
“The line among the lads, though, was that the crowd would be way higher because the main stand was full of the Saudis’ wives and kids!
“We were boys up against men and everyone knew it, which is a serious handicap in terms of strength and power, let alone experience.
“Crucially, we didn’t mind as our confidence was sky-high following a great tournament.
“We had loads of good players in the group, we were playing in front of patriotic crowds, and everyone believed in each other.
“Put those ingredients together and you have a team who thought we could win every game.
“To get to the Final, we beat Portugal in the semis in front of a packed Tynecastle, which was a terrific result as they had Luis Figo in their side.
“So we went in determined to give it a really good go.
“It would have been amazing if we could have got over the line, but it just wasn’t to be.”
If the young Scots weren’t quite able to become the country’s first side to win a global competition, they did succeed in mimicking their seniors with a failure which could definitely be classified as “glorious”.
Two-nil up and cruising, Brian O’neil missed a penalty to make it 3-0 and then, after the Saudis had fought back to draw in regulation time, he compounded his misery by missing the crucial spot-kick in the shoot-out.
“It was a real shame for Brian. I am sure even neutrals would have felt for him after those penalties,” said Dickov.
“However, these things happen in football. Age is not a factor, and at all levels you win as a team and you lose as a team. “Happily, the tournament provided a platform for Brian to kick on. He made more than 100 first-team appearances for Celtic, a similar amount for Preston and played in Germany with Wolsburg, where the fans loved him.
“It was an equally happy story for myself,” Dickov said.
“I will never have anything but good memories of the 1989 tournament because it allowed me to go on to make so many of my dreams come true.”
At club as well as international level. The 46-year-old won 10 full caps and made 22 appearance for Arsenal before going on to play for Manchester City, Blackburn Rovers and Leicester City.
“I am very fortunate in that I hugely enjoyed my time as a player,” he said.
“I had a brilliant time with all my clubs, got to play for Scotland and, decades on, I am still making a living from football,” he said.
“I am an international ambassador for Manchester City, which I guess would be an awful lot of people’s idea of the perfect job. “I get to travel around the world, representing a fantastic football club.
“If I can’t say I won a World Cup with Scotland, it says it all about the great memories from those days that we are still talking about them now, 30 years later.
“And having watched the Scotland women’s side lose to Argentina in midweek to a re-taken penalty, I hope their disappointment fades the same way.”