November 19 – Walter’s Back | On This Football Day

November 19 – Walter’s Back

TOGETHER with England, the Scottish national side is one of the two oldest in the world, after the two faced each other in the first ever international match in 1872.

Despite these proud beginnings the Scots have had rather more trouble in creating a dynasty of success to match their status as one of the world’s oldest teams. The team has never won the World Cup or the European Championship but they do have a good record of reaching the tournaments and turning out some of the world’s best players as well.

The team qualified for every World Cup from 1974 onwards apart from USA 94, but after the 1998 tournament in France the Tartan team went into something of a decline. No longer producing the kind of talent that had graced the top club sides for years the team began to struggle under Craig Brown and missed out on both Euro 2000 and the 2002 World Cup.

Brown stepped down and was replaced by the country’s first foreign manager, Berti Vogts in 2002. It proved to be a disastrous appointment and the German presided over the worst period in the history of the side as they lurched from one bad result to the next including defeats like 6–0 to Holland, 5–0 to France, 4–0 to Wales, 4–1 to South Korea and 3–0 to Hungary.

After two years of watching the team slide down the Fifa rankings the Tartan army could take it no more and Vogts fell on his sword.

On this day in 2004 the Scottish FA interviewed the man who would replace Vogts when former Rangers and Everton boss Walter Smith put on his best suit and tried to think of all his strengths and weaknesses (None…ah well, ah’m a bit of a perfectionist actually) as he faced the SFA interview panel.

Walter got on with the job in hand and quickly whipped his charges into shape as results picked up. The team began to pick up wins and under Smith they even beat France twice, once as part of their qualification campaign for the 2006 World Cup. Smith just failed to get them to the tournament, finishing third in the group behind Italy and Norway, but he had, as the cliche goes, restored a lot of pride.

Scotland began the qualification campaign for Euro 2008 with renewed optimism and Smith once again pulled off another win over France at Hampden Park before the lure of club management with his first love, Glasgow Rangers, proved too much and he handed over the reigns to another former Rangers manager Alex McLeish.

Something of rather more note happened on this day in 1969 when the world’s best ever player notched up a personal goal scoring landmark, which you can read about here. More tomorrow folks, but in the meantime, see Walter Smith giving the BBC’s Chick Young a hard time below.