Two weeks out, Scotland prepares for U-20 World Cup

By: Ian Rose | June 16th, 2007

Now that the Scottish senior national side has started its summer break from Euro 2008 qualifying, it’s time to concentrate on the lads. For the first time in 20 years, Scotland has qualified for the FIFA Under-20 World Cup. 1987 was the last time we made it, and Tartan Army fans remember well the heartbreak of that Cup, where we lost on penalties in the quarterfinals to West Germany, just barely missing out on what would have been the first U-20 WC semifinal in the nation’s history. This time around, having finished runners-up in last year’s U-19 European championships to qualify, we’re hoping to one-up that effort and make a real run at the deeper knockout rounds.

The group draw was relatively kind to Scotland (unlike our Group of Death in Euro 2008), and we avoided early clashes with any of the dominant South American or European sides, but there are two very tough competitors in our group in Nigeria (runner-up in 2005) and Japan (runner-up in 1999). To move on from the group stage, we will likely need a win against one of these teams, and will almost certainly need to beat the third and weakest group-mate, Costa Rica.

Leading Scotland to U-20 glory is none other than manager Archie Gemmill, star of Scotland’s 1978 World Cup team and scorer of probably the most famous goal in Scottish international football history against the Netherlands in that Cup. Gemmill’s team includes Hibernian’s young star keeper Andrew McNeil and Hearts/Motherwell striker Calum Elliot, who scored the only goal in our European semifinal.

As the first match on July 1st approaches, I’ll be keeping up with the campaign and reporting on the squad (and fans) that suit up and fly over to Canada in the hunt for World Cup glory. After a 20-year drought, just qualifying is a great achievement for the lads, but I think everyone on the team fully expects results in the group stage, and beyond that, who knows? Interestingly, Europe in general has been in a pretty serious drought lately in the Cup - In the last four tournaments, only one European team, Spain, has reached even the semifinal round. Joining Scotland this year to try to reverse that trend and break the domination of the South American and African sides will be Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal and Spain.

Good luck, lads. We’ll be watching. Just for inspiration and fun, let’s see that 1978 Gemmill goal AGAIN: