It's hugely tempting to say 'I told you so' and smile ruefully, yet smugly. I'm fighting hard to avoid the temptation, but will probably have to give in. Events panned out at Hampden on November 17 2007 almost exactly in line with my prediction of October 18 (see Georgia 2 Scotland 0), when I wrote:
“My prediction is yet another in the long line of glorious failures, with Scotland holding out until the 90th minute, in which Italy will be awarded a free kick in a dangerous area, or even worse, a penalty. And it'll be tears long before bedtime.”
And so it came to pass. I only wish that I had acted on my instincts and placed a bet to that effect, so at least I would have had some winnings to count, and offset the huge disappointment. But I'm not a betting man.
There is absolutely no doubt that the decision to award the free kick to Italy in the first place was shockingly wrong, in fact it was so bad that it sparked off in me thoughts of corruption and skullduggery.
The message seems to have gone out that the world's big footballing powers, such as Italy and France, must appear in the finals come what may. I think the Scottish Football Association should protest and protest and protest about the sheer awfulness of that decision, made with a linesman only a few feet away, even if the only result is to embarrass the European footballing authorities into suspending the referee.
Alex McLeish appeared close to tears in interviews immediately afterwards, and who could possibly blame him? At the very least, had that decision not been wrongly given in Italy's favour, we would likely have taken a point, and clung on to the hope that France would not get the result in Ukraine that they would have needed. At the very least, we would have had a REAL glorious failure, not been left with an exceptionally bad taste in the mouth.
Older Airdrie fans might find themselves thinking this morning about the Texaco Cup final, second leg, in March 1972, at the Baseball Ground against Derby County, when the Derby goalkeeper felled Airdrie forward Drew Jarvie with a punch in the penalty area. The keeper should have been sent off, and we should have had a penalty. Instead, the referee, Mr Jack Taylor, one of England's finest, gave a foul to Derby, to the astonishment of everyone watching. The sense of injustice still rankles.
Coming back to the more immediate past, the Scotland/Italy game didn't, of course, go exactly along the lines any Scotsman would have expected. Who on earth would have put money on Italy scoring in only the second minute? In that early passage of play, Scotland looked no better than a Sunday morning pub team, and we must all have feared the worst, a terrible hiding.
But the Scotland players hauled themselves back into the game, and if anyone had told us back when the draw was made that with 20 minutes of the qualifying campaign left Scotland would still have a chance, if only we could beat the world champions, we would most likely have been speed-dialling for the men with white coats and straitjackets.
Alan Hutton was surely Man of the Match, with his attacking runs down the right. The only problem was that we didn't give him enough of the ball, something that must be put right in future games. And maybe our coaches could drill him in crossing from the byline once he gets there. In my opinion, he's the most promising looking attacking full-back Scotland have had since the days of Sandy Jardine, Danny McGrain and David Hay.
Darren Fletcher did not look match fit, and consistently gave the ball away cheaply, though he did come on strongly in the final 20 minutes with some neat precision passes. James McFadden was far too isolated up front to do any real damage to a quality defence; when will we learn that if you're going to play one man up front, it's going to be difficult to score? Several times the ball came into the Italy box and there was no Scot there to be on the end of it.
By contrast, in the later stages of the game, when we committed to going forward, we sliced the Italy defence apart on more than one occasion, and could well have scored had James McFadden not (a) been greedy and shot wide when he should have squared the ball across the box, where there were at least three Scottish players waiting, and (b) been a fraction late in getting on to the end of the pass Kenny Miller made across the box minutes later.
Craig Gordon looks a lot safer than some Scottish goalkeepers have in the past, but the defence is seriously slow-moving. Another flaw is the sheer lack of physical presence amongst the players, epitomised when Paul Hartley and Toni squared up to one another. Toni's about a foot taller and built like a brick outhouse, and it looked very much like men against boys at time. What can we do about that? I don't know. The root problems causing native Scots to be generally smaller in stature than their counterparts elsewhere are probably poor diet, lack of Vitamin D from sunshine, and an internal sedentary lifestyle dictated by the weather.
Maybe it's time to follow the route taken by our rugby union selectors, and go scouring the Antipodes for talented football players of Scottish descent who have grown up in a land of plenty and won't be easily shrugged off the ball in the manner that many of our current players experience so often. Arsene Wenger has said that the future of football lies with big strong African players, and sometimes I can see exactly what he means. A good big one will, all other things being equaly, always beat a good little one. We have too many of the latter, and too few of the former.
