One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Will Scotland feel as good as they did when Archie Gemmill scored against the Netherlands?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group C preview. You can also read previews of Brazil, Haiti, and Morocco.
Will Scotland feel as good as they did when Archie Gemmill scored against the Netherlands?
It would be rude to say that Scotland’s entire World Cup history consists of one really nice goal scored by a balding midfielder, but it also would not be that much of a stretch.
Archie Gemmill’s iconic run and finish against the Netherlands in 1978 was instantly canonized in Scottish football folklore because it was a sublime goal against one of the world’s best teams, and slowly became elevated to singular status as Scotland failed to do anything of note on the global stage for the next several decades.
The Gemmill goal was so entrenched as a lost moment of Scottish greatness that it plays a pivotal role in 1996’s Trainspotting, a film which famously features a long Ewan McGregor monologue about how depressing it is to live in and be from Scotland.1The eventual punchline of the Archie Gemmill bit in Trainspotting is Ewan McGregor saying “I haven’t felt that good since Archie Gemmill scored against Holland in 1978!” after sex, but the actual punchline is that the dumb prank involving swapping out a tape of the goal for his friend’s sex tape sets his most put-together friend down the path to addiction and death. Much like the rest of the film, the point of the joke is that it’s not actually very funny if you stop to think about it.
But here’s the thing about Scotland’s sad international football history: It shouldn’t necessarily be this way.
While their neighbors to the south inarguably invented soccer as it is played today, Scotland arguably invented actually being good at it.
Back in the late 19th century, while the English game was dominated by gentlemen who thought it uncouth to do anything but run as far as you could in a straight line, Scottish factory workers figured out how passing works.
In this early period of international soccer, when the British and Irish nations refused to dignify the wider world by competing with them, Scotland were frequently better than England, largely because they started passing the ball first. The Scots won 24 of the British Home Championships before World War II.
But then it all more or less bottomed out until this decade: Scotland have been eliminated in the group stage of every single major international tournament since they started competing in the World Cup in 1954, and went 20 years without even qualifying for a major tournament before Euro 2020.
Now, thanks to both the best core of Scottish players in generations and an expanded field in both the Euros and the World Cup, Scotland have qualified for three of the last four major tournaments. This summer they will play in their first World Cup since 1998.
After two largely disappointing European Championships — including technically finishing in last place at the 2024 tournament — just being at the World Cup this time around might not be quite enough for Scotland fans who are starved for another moment that can go down next Gemmill.
At this tournament, Scotland will likely go as far as their midfield takes them. One of the quirks of international football is the London busses cliche: You wait 40 years for a decent midfielder to be born in your country, and then all of a sudden you have three genuinely great players in the middle of the park at the same time.
Scotland’s midfield group is headlined by Scott McTominay. Once McTomminay being voted as Manchester United’s player of the season was considered a damning indictment of the club’s late-2010s nadir. But after being forced to play defensive midfield and other positions that weren’t exactly natural to him for most of his United career, a transfer to Napoli revealed that not only is he an excellent late-arriving midfield goal threat, he might be one of the best in the world. McTomminay is tall and fast and blessed with a combination of impeccable timing and quick-trigger creativity that enable him to get to loose balls in the box and then improvise the right contact to score goals.
As vital to Scotland’s chances as McTomminay will be John McGinn, the stalwart Aston Villa central midfielder. McGinn is a “your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper” type of footballer: a midfield technician who boasts both a magical left foot that can bisect defenses and a gigantic butt that makes him impossible to dispossess.
Scotland’s midfield also boasts Bournemouth standout Ryan Christie, and Lewis Ferguson, who has been a solid performer for a very good Bologna team over the past three years. Norwich’s Kenny McLean has probably the least impressive club career of this group, but he is also responsible for one of the great World Cup qualifying moments of the last decade, an astonishing halfway-line goal to seal Scotland’s place at the tournament.
That midfield’s performance will likely make or break Scotland’s World Cup, and whether or not this recent upswing is remembered fondly or as a disapointment.
Qualifying is great, but for Scotland to finally have their long-awaited immortal World Cup moment, those players will have to congeal much better than they did at either of the last two Euros. The talent is there, but just playing a match against Brazil won’t be enough.
Now that Scotland are back on the stage, it’s time to recapture the feeling.
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