Scotland faces uncertain future at U20s

By: Ian Rose | July 6th, 2007

We’ve made our own bed. The Scottish team at this summer’s U-20 World Cup can’t blame bad calls or diving for their two painful losses in as many games. We’ve done it to ourselves. Awkward play in defense and an anonymous, toothless attack has made taken Scotland from a pre-tournament dark horse to a likely first-round exit. But, it’s not over yet.

There is, perhaps sadistically, a slim chance remaining that Scotland could make it to the first knockout round of the tournament. The one prerequisite is a win on Saturday (lucky 7’s Saturday, as it happens) over a Costa Rica team that has, thus far, played better than Scotland. They lie equal on points with Scotland (goose egg for both), but only two goals down on differential to our four. Thus with a draw on Saturday, they would take third place in the group and Scotland goes home. Even with the three points, a complicated set of scenarios must play out in order for Scotland to move on. And here is that set of scenarios now:

UPDATE: Group E has completed play, and their third-place team is North Korea with 2 points, meaning we would beat them with a win over Costa Rica.

In order to move on with three points, we need to beat two of the other five third-place teams. By far the most likely look to be Groups B and E. (E has now gone in our favor). In Group B, if Spain beats Jordan and Uruguay beats Zambia, then one of those two losing teams will end up third with only a single point from their draw against each other, and they’ll be headed home. These are the easy ways out, the likely ways out. After that, it gets cagey. In Group A, we need to depend on thus-far-goalless Canada to beat or draw with Congo, and Congo to lose to Chile, producing a three-point contender we could possibly challenge on goal differential. In the C group, we need Portugal to beat Gambia, which is a relatively safe bet, but we’ll probably need to them to win by two or three, which is always a dangerous one.

Technically, if the U.S. beats up on Brazil tonight, we’d have a chance to overcome Brazil as well, but that depends on other games too.

The point is, we had our chance to earn our way past the preliminaries. A twenty year wait between youth championships looks likeliest to produce nothing but disappointment and a quick trip home. There’s already dissent in the ranks, as the players are beginning to question Archie Gemmill’s mostly defensive lineups and everyone in Scotland is calling for keeper Andy McNeil’s head. Regardless of what happens on Saturday, and in the other matches on which we now depend, Scotland has a long way to go to prove we deserve to be here. After the dismal efforts against Japan and Nigeria, it will take more than backing into the next round – it will take a win there.