Dubai: Scotland defender Derek Whyte smiled at his five-year-old son Cruze as he set off for the 1998 World Cup in France and promised he would take him next time.
“He’s 23 now and he’s still never been,” says Dubai-based Whyte.
Still never been because, for a country that qualified for every World Cup from 1974 bar 94 until France 98, it is now nearly 20 years since the land of Sir Alex Ferguson, Kenny Dalglish, Sir Matt Busby and Bill Shankly last qualified for a major international football championship.
‘Glorious failure’ was the description that seemed forever etched upon the Scottish psyche when the nation previously did reach tournaments.
Think 1974 when Scotland, who had drawn with Brazil, became the first team to be knocked out of a World Cup without losing a game.
Or Euro 96 when, after the heartbreak of a 2-0 loss to England when Gary McAllister saw a penalty saved with the opportunity to make it 1-1, Scotland were then put out on goals scored – points and goal difference being equal – when Patrick Kluivert’s late consolation trundler through David Seaman’s legs squeezed the Dutch through despite being on the end of a 4-1 drubbing to the hosts.
That’s not to say the apt description of ‘glorious failure’ has been forgotten since Scotland opened World Cup 98 with a game against Brazil only decided with a Tom Boyd own goal 17 minutes from time that gave the holders a 2-1 win.
Scotland beat England 1-0 at Wembley in the Euro 1999 play-off qualification but couldn’t do enough to reverse the deficit of the 2-0 loss from the first leg and would have qualified for Euro 2008 had they beaten Italy at Hampden. Scotland lost, of course, to an injury-time goal.
These rare highs, however, have far more often been replaced by crushing lows such as drawing in the Faroe Islands and a 4-6-0 formation in a defeat to the Czech Republic - as ‘glorious failure’ has made way for the painful realisation Scotland has become a forgotten man in international football.
“Never, I would never have believed you,” Whyte says when asked what his reaction would have been if he was told at France 98 it would be the last tournament Scotland qualified for until now.
“It was a given (that Scotland qualified for tournaments).”
The Scotland captain at World Cup 98 Colin Hendry concurs, adding that it’s “quite scary” to even think about it.
Forget the days of world-class players such as Dalglish or Graeme Souness, Hendry says, even in his generation he namechecks the likes of himself, a Premier League winner with Blackburn Rovers, McAllister, another English title winner. Paul Lambert, a Champions League winner with Borussia Dortmund and John Collins, a Champions League semi-finalist with Monaco.
“We don’t have the players playing at the highest level anymore, that’s the problem,” Hendry, part of the Scotland Legends team that played England Legends in Dubai earlier this year in an annual event organised by Whyte, said.
Instead, the majority of the Scotland squad now, Hendry sighs, play at Championship level in England.
The Fifa rankings have Scotland at 61, below such footballing powerhouses of Panama at 59 and Burkina Faso and Tunisia joint 41.
A small country of five million Scotland may be, but the pain of failing to make tournaments has been amplified by nations with considerably less people such as Northern Ireland, Iceland - who of course knocked out England - and Wales doing so incredibly well at Euro 2016.
“That’s the stick used to beat (Scotland manager) Gordon Strachan,” says Hendry, “that they can do it.”
Perhaps modern Scotland can be summed up thus: in their last World Cup qualifying match, against Slovenia in March, Strachan, almost certainly needing a win to remain in charge, threw on the English-born striker Chris Martin (no, not the Coldplay one) with eight minutes left at 0-0 to boos from the Scottish crowd.
Lo and behold Derby County’s Martin, on loan at Fulham, both Championship clubs, who plays for Scotland as his dad was born there but had failed to convince the fans of his worth, struck the winner with two minutes remaining, handing Strachan and the country a World Cup lifeline.
Even still, going into Saturday’s Auld Enemy clash against England, Scotland are precariously placed.
Only the top teams – almost certainly England in Group F – automatically qualify for Russia 2018 while the best eight runners-up in the nine European groups go into a play-off. Scotland sit fourth, two points behind Slovakia who have nine, with England on 13.
“Yes, probably,” says Whyte on whether Strachan’s four-year reign as national manager would come to a close should, as most predict, Scotland are defeated by England at Hampden. “I think he would say ‘I’ve tried my best’ and step down. I would hope not though because I think Gordon is a good manager.”
Whyte is as baffled at Scotland’s two-decade of international wilderness as most in the country, suggesting the reason is perhaps down to the nation’s young players not working at their game enough.
Where most see continued doom and despair, however, the former Celtic, Middlesbrough and Aberdeen defender, a member of the Scotland squad at Euro 92, 96 and World Cup 98, sees “a brilliant opportunity to get back in the mix.”
Despite the 3-0 defeat at Wembley at last year, Whyte does not believe the difference between England and Scotland is as vast as many – such as perhaps the English media who sent just one journalist to Strachan’s press conference earlier this week – believe.
“I’m quite optimistic about it and the reason I’m so optimistic is the season Celtic have had,” Whyte, who now works in sales as a Business Development Manager for Japanese company Torishima, says of his former club who claimed a Scottish treble by going undefeated domestically.
“Young Kieran Tierney, Scott Brown, Craig Gordon, Leigh Griffiths, who I really like as a centre-forward, and Stuart Armstrong, who had a great season as well. (The Scotland team) is really the backbone of what Celtic have done and they have that winning confidence that can hopefully transpire to the rest of the team.”
Their Champions League experience, where Celtic earned draws home away against Manchester City, will be invaluable too, he insists.
“They will believe in themselves,” he says. “The players have Champions League experience and that makes a big difference. The higher you play it brings out the best in you and the Celtic players have played against the best. It will stand them in good stead.”
At Euro 96, the night before the England game the Scotland players watched Braveheart.
“The boys were all pumped up,” remembers Whyte after watching the Mel Gibson multiple Oscar-winning classic about the 13th century Scottish warrior William Wallace’s freedom fight against English forces.
“We had a really good squad. Who knows what would have happened if Gary had scored that penalty…”
For Scotland, it would be a relief to think those days of ‘glorious failure’ will one day - soon - return.
And for Whyte, it would be nice to finally be able to take his boy to a World Cup.
