Monday saw the 26th anniversary of Scotland opening the World Cup in France by facing off against holders Brazil in the Stade de France. In the history of Scottish football, it was a high water mark of our achievements as we took part in our fourth tournament out of the five that took place in the 1990s.
Not only did we go toe to toe with the team that went all the way to the final, Tom Boyd even scored the winner that day! Yeah, you know which net…
Little did we know that it would be twenty three years until we’d qualify for another tournament, and twenty six years before we’d be taking part in one that wasn’t being played on our own doorstep! But as fate would have it, now that we are finally back on that continental stage, they’ve asked us to open the tournament once more. This time, against the Euro 2024 hosts, Germany.
The match at the Allianz Arena in Munich kicks off at 8pm oor time and is live on ITV. I’m not saying STV because they can’t be bothered doing any coverage at all for this tournament so unfortunately we’re going to have to suffer the foreign coverage who will want to focus just as much on their own team as the teams that are playing.
Looking back as I always do at this point is where it gets slightly complicated. We have played a Germany twenty three times in the past. Six of those were East Germany, of which we won two, drew one and lost three. The stats tend to count West Germany and the united Germany as the same thing, so on that basis we’ve played them seventeen having won just four and drawing five, the other eight being defeats.
However, this will only be the third time we’ve met the Germans at a major tournament. The first time was in Mexico at the World Cup in 1986 where the then West German side came from behind to beat us 2-1. Gordon Strachan had given us the lead, you remember the iconic giant advertising board celebration, before Rudi Voller equalised five minutes later and Klaus Allofs turned things around early in the second half. That West German side would of course go all the way to the final, losing out to the Diego Maradona inspired Argentina.
Then of course there was our meeting in Euro 92. The newly reunified Germany were 2-0 winners on the day, goals from Karl Heinz Riedle and Stefan Effenberg, though that scarcely tells the story. There’s a book somewhere that tells the story of Scotland’s Swedish Adventure better…
Funnily enough, just as with 1986, Germany went on to the final which they then lost. We’ll come back to that.
The last time we faced the Germans was in Euro 2016 qualifying, where back in September 2015 we lost 3-2 at Hampden. Thomas Muller had twice given the Germans the lead, but a Matt Hummels own goal and a James McArthur strike had brought us back into it twice too in an action packed first half. Unfortunately, Ilkay Gundogan got the eventual winner ten minutes into the second half.
The other game in that campaign came a year earlier in Germany. Once more Thomas Muller was on the scoresheet, once more Scotland pegged them back this time through Ikechi Anya, and once more they scored one more than we did – again through Thomas Muller. Apologies for the shaky cam action here, it’s the only version of this game I could find!
Enough with the defeats. The last time we didn’t lose to the Germans was in Euro 2004 qualifying. When we faced them at Hampden in June 2003, Fredi Bobic had given Germany the lead midway through the first half but thankfully Kenny Miller levelled the game midway through the second. The 1-1 draw helped Bertie Vogts’ men make the playoffs.
The last time we actually beat the Germans was in Germany! April 1999 saw a 1-0 win in a friendly match in Bremen courtesy of Don Hutchison midway through the second half. He would of course make a habit of getting those big goals away from home that year, what with that goal at Wembley and all!
The two other competitive meetings between Scotland and West Germany came in qualifying for the 1970 World Cup. Gerd Muller and Bobby Murdoch shared the goals in a 1-1 draw at Hampden in April 1969. Love a Pathe video!
Then in September 1969, as you may have heard in the commentary of the previous video, the Germans got their first victory over Scotland with a 3-2 win for the home side. Jimmy Johnstone gave Scotland a very early lead, but Klaus Fichtel levelled the game before half time and Gerd Muller gave the Germans the lead. Alan Gilzean levelled the game once more on the hour mark, but Reinhard Libuda got the winner for the Germans with ten minutes to play.
What’s the other wins though? That’s what we want to hear about! Well, the first win came in a 2-0 victory in October 1936 with Jimmy Delaney getting both goals on that occasion. And yes there is footage of this, so apologies for the flag flying at Ibrox for the visitors but you know how it was back then.
Next came a 3-1 win in Stuttgart against West Germany in May 1957. Two goals from Bobby Collins and one from Jackie Mudie, with Gerhard Siedl getting their goal. Ignore the caption at the start of this video!
And finally, our third win in just four meetings of the teams (we drew the first meeting back in 1929) came in May 1959 with a 3-2 victory. Graham Leggat, John White and Andrew Weir getting our goals, Uwe Seeler and an Erich Juskowiak penalty for them.
Our other visits to Germany have seen us draw 2-2 in May 1964 in Hannover when Alan Gilzean and Uwe Seeler each got a double.
Then there was a 2-1 defeat in March 1974 in Wegberg as both teams warmed up for the World Cup in West Germany later that year. Paul Breitner’s penalty followed a couple of minutes later by a goal from Jurgen Grabowski gave them a two goal lead. Kenny Dalglish halved it near the end of the second half, but we couldn’t prevent the defeat in the end.
And finally, back to the Euro 2004 campaign, our September 2003 visit to Dortmund saw Fredi Bobic and a Michael Ballack penalty give the hosts a two goal lead, but once more Scotland pulled a goal back through Neil McCann and unfortunately once more we couldn’t turn it around completely.
I mentioned earlier that we’ve played East Germany six times. Two of those took place in East Germany so for completeness I’ll mentioned that we had a 1-0 defeat in Berlin in September 1977 through a goal from Hartmut Schade, which I can’t find a video for, but I do have the Euro 1984 qualifying defeat in Halle that ended 2-1 to the hosts. Ronald Kreer and Joachim Streich for the hosts, Eamonn Bannon with our goal.
You’ll note from this that we don’t really lose heavily to Germany. All but one of the defeats are by a single goal, and in some of those cases we were perhaps unfortunate. Actually the heaviest defeat was in Euro 92 and we were the better team for long spells in that game!
But that was against the reigning World Champions at the time. This time out we’re playing against a Germany who haven’t performed well at all lately. They were knocked out of the group stages of the last two World Cups, and only made the round of sixteen at Euro 2020. They were also third in the 2022/23 Nations League, and only avoided relegation to League B because England were even worse.
Ha ha!
That’s a poor record by their high standards, and they’ll be looking to remedy that. Of course, as hosts they’ve not been playing competitive matches. Whilst we were qualifying by beating the likes of Spain, Norway, Georgia and Cyprus, the Germans were losing in friendlies to Belgium and Poland and drawing with Ukraine.
You know I’m including the Poland win here now…
Not that our record in friendlies is particularly great! But as we were losing 3-1 England, they were losing 4-1 to Japan. As we were drawing our final two group games with Georgia and Norway, the Germans were losing to Turkey and Austria.
No wonder they changed their manager last year, with Julian Nagelsmann coming in to replace Hansi Flick. And while that didn’t have an instant impact given it happened after the Japan defeat, more recently it does seem to have improved things. For example, in March they beat both France and the Netherlands.
Whilst this month they’ve once more drawn with Ukraine and beaten Greece.
Okay, so that’s not quite as impressive as March, but it’s still a run of four games without defeat. We can’t say that, we were just happy to end our losing streak against Gibraltar! And of course, our send off last Friday night at Hampden was a 2-2 draw against Finland.
So Germany are in better form, but that’s all friendlies. When it mattered, Scotland rose to the occasion and got the results we needed. Let’s have a reminder of that!
Okay, so we’ve struggled to recapture the five wins out of five start to qualifying that pretty much got us here in the first place. The Germans are at home, they feel like they have a point to prove… so it’s a German win in the opening fixture?
Well, opening games are never that straight forward, are they? Who can forget Cameroon beating Argentina at Italia 90, or Senegal beating France in 2002. Those were opening games that reverberated around the world.
And then there was Euro 2004. Greece beating hosts Portugal in the opening game of the tournament was another shock…
But it was outdone by the fact that the same two teams met in the final that year and Greece were the team with their hands on the trophy at the end of the game.
The Euros does this every so often. Wales got all the way to the semi final in Euro 2016 having not qualified for anything since the 1950s. Denmark came off the beach to take part in Euro 92 and only went and won the whole thing, beating that same German side in the final that had beaten us in the group. Denmark also went from the horrible Christian Eriksen heart attack in their opening game of Euro 2020 to recover and make the semi finals where they unfortunately met the diving English.
For Scotland, qualification from the group is our holy grail. We don’t want to come home too soon yet again for what would be the twelfth time out of twelve major competitions. We’re not asking to do what Greece did (although that would be amazing!) or even what Wales did (I’d love it if we did) but if we can at least go where no Scot has gone before and make the knockout stage then we’ll probably party until the SPFL season kicks off again in August.
A good result against the hosts would set us up very nicely for that. And Germany might just suit us a little better than playing against the very top sides in Europe or the sides that shut up shop against us and try to frustrate us.
What we need to do is guard against the negative attitude though. Some will will tell you this is a free hit tonight, but Euro 2016 qualifying showed that if our rivals take anything from Germany as Ireland did in that campaign then it can be devastating. There’s no free hit when you have just three games in a group.
We also need to guard against the attitude that three points can be enough to qualify from this group. It’s true that it could be the case, but in both Euro 2016 and Euro 2020 the two third placed teams that didn’t qualify all had three points from one win and two defeats – Turkey and Albania at Euro 2016, Finland and Slovakia at Euro 2020. So that’s a dangerous attitude to have.
But however it goes tonight, let’s not leave this match thinking we could have done better. Let’s make our chances count, give our best, and put in an opening night performance of which we can all be proud.
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