World Cup on hold for Scotland as players have surreal 'maintenance day' in Charlotte

However, it’s still not where a group of Scottish footballers want to spend a couple of days kicking their heels. To make matters worse, when they pulled open the pinch pleat curtains of their room on Friday morning they were met with an unfamiliar sight during their stay in North Carolina to date: rain.

Oh, Scotland. Why do we do this to ourselves? The hype, the hoopla and then the almost inevitable need to face reality the morning afterwards. We’ve enjoyed the overhead kick, now brace yourself for the heavy landing. You've had your fun.

The fans might have drunk cities dry, making many new friends as they did so, but the life has been sucked out of the tournament by Scotland’s footballers. The supporters will be missed, but the players won’t be. This seems to be the gist of the coverage, over here in America as well as back home.

What a strange, surreal day these players endured on Friday. Those who have spoken since the dispiriting defeat to Brazil on Wednesday have underlined the need to maintain their professional standards during this unsatisfying period of limbo. The squad took part in what sports scientists would describe as a “maintenance day”, which is when players do individual work depending on their own situation.

They certainly won’t have been prepping for Mexico or anyone else. Hopes of a trip to Estadio Azteca, which at one point was Scotland’s most likely knockout stage destination, are growing fainter and fainter with the conclusion of each group game. During the Brazil pre-match press conference, manager Steve Clarke had broken the habit of a lifetime by indulging a Mexican reporter’s question about the prospect of Scotland playing his countrymen next week. The manager even volunteered information about having once scored the winning goal there for the Scotland Under-19 team.

It felt unusually injudicious from Clarke. He won’t be doing that again. Fate has blown Scotland so far off course Mexico City they will very probably be sitting at home when that last 32 tie kicks-off.

Having relied on Belarus securing an unlikely point in Copenhagen to reignite their qualifying chances in November, the Scots have been left counting on results in places like in New Jersey and Santa Clara, where Australia and Paraguay played out a convenient draw, going their way. So far, so not so good.

Ecuador show Scotland how it is done

Gonzalo Plato can take his place in the gallery of World Cup Scottish bogeymen. His late winner for Ecuador against Germany at the New York New Jersey Stadium seemed to put the tin lid on Scotland’s chances of progressing. Nevertheless, in whatever grand room in their hotel the Scottish players were watching, there ought to have been applause. This was exactly the kind of high-energy performance, following the blow of losing an early goal, that Scotland found so elusive against teams of Germany’s standard.

Had the Scots produced anything like this level of ambitious display against Morocco and Brazil, they might not be heading for the departure gate. The joie de vivre so evident in Ecuador’s play was sorely lacking in Scotland, despite Clarke’s insistence that the aim of the game this time around was enjoyment.

Even Ecuador’s Argentinian manager Sebastian Beccacece was a pent-up ball of energy on the sidelines before rushing to celebrate with family members after climbing a perimeter fence.

It isn’t hard to make the contrast with Clarke, although of course the manager has had little to celebrate. One victory over the tournament's lowest-ranked team, one deflected goal. The last time Scotland hit a cleanly-struck goal in a major tournament was at Euro 2020, when Callum McGregor rifled in from the edge of the box against Croatia. A paucity of exciting moments on what has been such an expensive trip for fans means Clarke is being buried beneath a torrent of social media opprobrium once again. It’s almost beginning to feel like the new four-year deal he signed only last month is no longer viable.

As someone noted on X, with reference to their rapidly fading World Cup lifeline, if Scotland were a Dignitas candidate they would be waved through without a blink, no question asked. A lost cause. All hope gone. Scotland's qualifying hopes decreasing almost by the minute was another source of amusement – the calculation had reached as low as 5 per cent on Friday: “So, you’re saying there’s still a chance….?”

This waiting room scenario rekindled memories of Italia 90, when Scotland were placed in remarkably similar circumstances, also after a defeat to Brazil in the final group match.

That match in Turin 36 years ago was a far tighter game than the one in Miami, Scotland falling to a scrappy goal from Muller eight minutes from time. Like earlier this week, a point would almost certainly have been enough.

It left Scotland sitting third in Group C - their group this time around too. The Scots’ fate hinged on the results of Uruguay v South Korea in Group E and Holland v Republic of Ireland in Group F. An injury-time winner from Uruguay’s Daniel Fonseca was the first bit of bad news before the door was slammed shut later in the day by Niall Quinn’s late equaliser against the Dutch, following a goalkeeper error by Hans Van Breukelen. Andy Roxburgh, the then Scotland manager, watched it all unfold on the television at the team’s base in Rapallo.

“When you think of how Uruguay got their goal in the 92nd minute and, the way Ireland got their equaliser, there was no change in our hard-luck story,” he said afterwards. “We knew after the Brazil match that it was going to be like a game of roulette – and some of us have never been very good at that.”

Of course, the secret is not allowing it to get to this desperate and undignified stage. Roxburgh acknowledged this point. Clarke surely will likewise when he addresses Scotland’s World Cup letdown, as he surely must do, before the squad head home.