The World Stage Scotland's Game

Here's Souness. Oh, he's given him a chance! Right in the net!

30 years ago, football was central to Scottish society.

Oh, what a goal by Strachan!

The stars of the game were national icons.

Even when you're a wee kid, every kid in Scotland in those days,

when you're looking at the Scotland team,

every player was a hero to them all.

Good play by Gemmill, and again.

It's in! 3-1!

Scotland players were world-class

and regularly competed at international tournaments.

Arenas in which Scotland would loudly express its national pride.

They may have been confident in their place on the international

football stage but Scotland, as a nation, was struggling.

She had lost her industrial identity in the '80s

and had limited influence in the union.

It wouldn't be until the '90s that her political voice would grow louder.

Scotland qualified for five World Cups in a row,

as well as the European Championships in '92 and '96.

The team was able to rub shoulders with the world's elite.

And he's scored for Scotland!

It was an honour to represent the country.

If you don't want to play for your country,

then there's something wrong with you.

The shot goes in and Scotland have scored!

There's two sides of it, there's the responsibility,

if you don't perform, you get abuse and you get stick but at

the same time, when you know you're the best player in the country

in your position, then it's a nice feeling.

McAllister to McCoist.

It's a goal for Scotland!

There is a mood, a very positive mood for change,

and I think football is being affected by that.

That doesn't mean to say we'll be more disgruntled if we

don't win tournaments but I think it's important to say look,

if Scotland's on the march,

Scotland's in a different mood, then why shouldn't football reflect that?

The world as a whole was speeding up,

becoming more fractured and transient.

Football was rapidly becoming a money-fuelled, global industry.

And Scottish football was going to have to work hard to keep up.

France, 1998.

The opening game of the World Cup.

1.7 billion viewers.

Taking centre stage -

Scotland and Brazil.

I grew up in a generation that believed that Brazilian football

was the greatest football in the world,

it was the romantic,

this was the nation that had produced Garrincha and Pele and Didi

and Vava

and all of these great players when I was a kid growing up.

And the idea that the World Cup would be opened by the two greatest

football nations in the world - Brazil and the other one,

the one thing that they share is a slightly kind of mad romance

about football, that there's something special,

an elixir about football that is almost kind of alcoholic.

I was wanting to start, I think everybody was,

being the opening game of the World Cup.

And the Brazilian team's standing there, a million dollars,

chewing gum, holding hands right the way up there.

Nobody gave us an earthly against them,

because you look at the Brazilian team that day.

We had a good side, I think we were underestimated, Scotland,

a really good side.

COMMENTATOR: The waiting is almost over.

The biggest match that these Scotland players will ever play in.

The Brazil game was a brilliant game to play in.

COMMENTATOR: Winning his 87th cap, and defending this corner kick.

And Scotland are one down.

They scored after eight minutes, and you think, "Here we go.

"Might not get a kick here."

But then we started slowly but surely coming into the game.

COMMENTATOR: And Scotland with the opportunity

to equalise against the world champions.

And Collins equalises for Scotland!

It's 1-1.

It wasn't until after the game that I was sitting on the bus thinking,

if I had missed it, then I was thinking, oh,

wow, I would've been known as the guy that missed a penalty

that let the whole stadium down, the whole country back home.

COMMENTATOR: The run made by Cafu. Here is Cafu!

Saved by Jim Leighton and it's an own goal!

I thought we were excellent that day. It was a great occasion.

COMMENTATOR: Spectacular effort from Paul Lambert,

and that is the last action of the match.

Scotland have been beaten by Brazil.

Scotland may not have won,

but they now had a stronger belief in their abilities.

That belief carried them into their next match, against Norway,

which ended in a draw.

It was all to play for against outsiders Morocco.

Weir trying to get back.

Touch off Jim Leighton, and it's number two.

In the end, we were heavily beaten, and I think beaten on the night

by a much better team.

Basir, good skill.

Still Basir.

That's number three.

And maybe the lesson,

the consistent lesson across all of these World Cups,

and all of these major tournaments in Europe is the same thing.

That Scotland overestimate how good they are and profoundly

underestimate and sometimes even patronise other nations.

That's full-time in Saint Etienne.

And Scotland are out of the World Cup.

It's not such a disgrace, I feel,

to fail when you're in the finals,

you're in a higher level of competition.

Morocco had kicked Scotland out.

This was the last game Scotland would play at either

a World Cup or European Championship.

Our last appearance on the world stage.

And that's what we all miss.

Not so much just being in the competitions

but having the Scottish fans there,

something to shout about and the others...

I think it's been missing for a long time.

These tournaments had given fans the chance to proclaim their

national identity to the world.

They played the bagpipes, they wore kilts,

and they prided themselves on being good guests.

This was their calling card

and by France 98, the Scotland fans were so practised at it,

they effectively policed themselves.

I'm at the front of this bus, at the front of this huge procession

of tens of thousands of Scotland fans and quite a few Moroccans

joining in as well -

we came across, I think, a Peugeot car

which was blocking the procession and the double-decker bus.

And what happened is some guy has got off the bus,

he carefully lifted the Peugeot onto the pavement,

the double-decker went past, and my memory is, looking back,

and the same fans had shifted the Peugeot back

to exactly the same spot.

Now that to me encapsulated fans who were just incredibly anxious

to be good Scots, but also good world citizens.

One explanation for this impeccable behaviour might have been

a desire to differentiate ourselves from England,

our occasionally badly-behaved neighbours,

with whom Scotland were sometimes confused.

It was an important time for Scotland to be seen in

a positive light, as the next year would see the opening of the

new Scottish Parliament.

A government would be formed in Edinburgh for the first time

in almost 300 years.

Scotland's international profile was growing.

30 years ago, Scotland the nation was a very different place.

Mired in the depths of an economic depression,

and without a voice in the international corridors of power.

Yet the national football team was world-renowned.

In charge of that team was Jock Stein.

Considered the greatest manager of his generation and an icon of

the game in Scotland.

What I find fascinating about Stein and indeed the era that

he was part of was that Scotland was a very different place,

it was a hugely industrial place,

most footballers were working class, and the vast majority of those

players had either been in apprentices or trained or been part

of the industrial process - in the case of Jock Stein, in the mines.

He was someone whose values, think, were shaped by industrialism.

And also by common effort, by what working class people

now would consider to be labourism or socialism or whatever,

So I think there was a degree of two things going on there,

one of which was the capacity to organise teams of people,

that sense of the social, but also a strict understanding that

discipline, hierarchy and order were to be respected.

He was a presence, he came in the room and everybody fell silent.

It wasn't that we were afraid of Jock, he wasn't aggressive,

but he just had a manner and a way about him

that everybody stood up and listened.

He was hard on me, he was hard on all the senior players

but I think I got on well with him.

I enjoyed his way of managing, I responded to his style.

He was hard, and I think he picked on the bigger players,

the more experienced players, to make a point to the younger ones.

I was on the end of a couple of absolute rollickings from him.

Jock Stein's coaching style was born in the tough mining communities of his youth.

But now that era was coming to an end.

In the early 1980s, policies implemented by the newly-elected Conservative government

ravaged Scotland's industrial heartland.

The first two years of Margaret Thatcher's reign saw

one-fifth of the Scottish workforce lose their jobs.

The old Victorian economy which had literally lived on until

the late '70s, virtually disappeared.

Mining, heavy manufacturing, shipbuilding, etc.

Partly fuelled by a huge hike in oil prices and also

in the Thatcherite government's determination

to extract inflation from the economy at almost any price.

When the interest rates go up,

whole sectors of Scottish industry disappeared.

So the national mood is a combination of humiliation,

bitterness,

worry, deep anxiety,

insecurity...

perhaps above all, anger.

Scotland could vote one way but was consistently overruled

by its larger neighbour, leading to a feeling of powerlessness.

An academic from the 1980s paints a bleak picture.

Scotland is a poor country, that's the main thing to bear in mind.

It's not just poor in the financial sense,

it's not just poor that people are unemployed - that of course is true.

But it's poor in the sense that there is

no focus for Scottish public life.

There's no genuine public focus, no arena for Scotland to assert itself,

and for the Scottish identity to be seen.

And by the way, no place for people to take responsibility for

their own actions, so you're forever blaming failures upon the English,

because they're the guys in charge,

and I think this gets displaced into football to a very real extent.

In 1985, the big challenge for the Scotland team was to qualify

for the World Cup being held the next year in Mexico.

Scotland had to at least draw with Wales in Cardiff

to make it through to a play-off tie with Australia.

Jock Stein's mantra that football is nothing without the fans was evident before the match.

There's an awful lot of people coming to see us and they're

paying an awful lot of money and travelling a long distance -

let's try and give them a result and that's important.

COMMENTATOR: Wales get us underway.

Jock Stein, tough old moments, these, for Jock.

All day, he looked drawn, he looked grey, but that's the stress of

football for you - in saying that, you know, he'd been through all

these big games before. As you get older, it becomes harder.

COMMENTATOR: With ten minutes to go,

to send Scotland to the play-offs for Mexico.

Cooper has made it!

The most vital kick of his career.

And Davie Cooper equalises for Scotland.

We saw Jock in the dugout,

there was a wee bit of a something happened,

and it caught people's attention.

But you know you're thinking, we don't know what's happened there,

but just let's just get on with this game!

COMMENTATOR: Header across goal, there goes the final whistle!

Scotland have got the result they wanted so badly.

Wales 1, Scotland 1.

Jock Stein being carried inside -

he's being carried in,

the Scottish doctor looking on anxiously...

While Jock fought for his life, the players celebrated the result,

unaware of what was happening.

Everybody was ecstatic and then Alex Ferguson walked in the room,

and said a couple of words.

And it was, erm, "Jock's dead".

And the room just went silent.

His death being so sudden and awfully dramatic,

it was just a shock to everybody in the game,

supporters were just absolutely shocked.

Alan Rough talks about going in the bus from the stadium and

watching the people at the side of the road in various stages of grief.

He was the guru of that time -

when you've someone of that stature, someone of that presence,

of that influence, I mean, it was incredible,

the loss to Scottish football, of course.

After Jock Stein's death, the Scotland team would be led by

interim manager and Stein's assistant, Alex Ferguson.

Ferguson, like Stein, was a product of Scotland's heavy industry.

Jesus Christ, this Icelandic air has gone for your brain!

Ferguson had been a shipyard worker, he had been an apprentice boy

in the yards in Govan,

had actually led maybe two apprentice strikes

by the time he was sort of 16, 17 year old,

and when he came to St Johnstone, his first professional club,

I think he was only 17 or 18 and was already a seasoned trade unionist

and actually became the PFA representative at St Johnstone

and, you know, he was still in his teens.

I mean, that's almost unthinkable now in modern football,

so here was a guy who again had a very, very deep connection to

the industrial working class and to the place that he grew up.

Alex Ferguson, trusted by the team,

provided continuity as they headed to the Mexico World Cup in 1986.

NEWSREEL: The Scotland team finally arrived a day after the opening ceremony,

saying high altitude training in America was more important.

We went to Santa Fe for our altitude training

which later on everybody told us was a waste of time

because we didn't go long enough.

We only went for ten days and then we went back to sea level,

apparently it wasn't any good.

# We're the famous Tartan Army and we're off to Mexico. #

NEWSREEL: Bemused Mexican police had never seen anything like it before.

# We love you Scotland we do... #

The hotel was a bit iffy to say the least,

stuck out in the sticks, could barely get a phone call home.

All we done was drink coffee and watch videos.

I had a television, that's my lot, but it was Spanish telly,

Spanish-speaking television, Mexican.

And I didn't have a head board to my bed and inside it was harling,

you know, the harling outside, I couldn't even sit against that,

so it was really the most boring place I've ever been to.

The three teams we played were in the top ten

in the world rankings at the time.

Uruguay, Germany - West Germany - and Denmark.

Denmark had come on so it was a hard, hard job.

Their second game was against West Germany.

COMMENTATOR: And off go a team that has established itself as one of

the favourites to lift this trophy.

And there's Alex Ferguson, not looking too perturbed.

Petrified of him, petrified of letting your team mates down,

petrified of the other team scoring a goal.

There's nothing wrong with that.

COMMENTATOR: On to Strachan -

what a great goal!

Oh, what a goal by Strachan!

Didn't have a lot of tactics in those days.

It used to be just the usual,

everybody played 4-4-2 and we got on with it.

And whoever you were playing against,

if we had seven individuals better than theirs, then usually we won.

And the final whistle has gone.

But that goal was in vain,

as Scotland lost the game to the Germans.

It's another disappointing result.

Scotland had to win their final game against Uruguay

to progress to the next round.

Well, we get this all the time.

But they found themselves up against violent opposition.

COMMENTATOR: Oh, dear, Oh, dear, Oh, dear, that's dreadful.

Well, they are simply late and then they throw their arms up as

if they were choir boys,

which as you can see from that expression, they're not.

Well, the final whistle has gone. Uruguay have done it.

In all honesty, they simply didn't have the ability to beat this team.

And, once again, Scotland for the fourth time in succession,

have failed at the final hurdle.

We didn't take part in a game of football, today.

We were cheated out of it.

One could only describe that as the scum of world football.

Mexico, in 86, was the beginning of the end of a dream.

You see some of the players that are in that squad -

players that couldn't even get into the squad -

and you look at them now, and you think it was one of the

finest generations ever of Scottish football.

It may have been a great era for Scottish football,

but Alex Ferguson's future lay elsewhere.

He had the same industrial heritage as Jock Stein,

but he was earlier on in his career

and could see that the best opportunities lay in England.

How are you looking forward to your first game at United?

Oh, I'm excited about it, I must say that. I'm looking forward to it.

Alex Ferguson will probably go down

in the history of Scottish sport, and Scottish society,

as being one of the great achievers.

Just think of it - it's quite remarkable that someone could go

from being a 16-year-old shipyard engineer apprentice,

and go all the way up to now being

on Harvard Business School's, leadership programme,

a required reading of students all over the world and whatever,

around his leadership skills.

That is an amazing trajectory in anybody's life,

no matter where they come from.

And for that to be a young, working class man from Scotland

who's achieved that -

that is something special.

Jock Stein knew that football was undergoing radical changes,

and had earmarked someone from outwith the traditional circles

as his successor.

I was in a car with Jock and we were going down to this coaching course.

And Jock's sitting in the back-seat, and he turned round to me and he said, "Are you ambitious?"

And, of course, when you come away with a line like that, obviously there's something behind this.

And I said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Of course I'm ambitious. I'm ambitious for Scottish football. I want..."

"No, no, no... But, personally. You know?

"Would you like to, you know, do another job?"

I said, "Like what?"

And he said, "What about mine?"

The Scottish Football Association have made a man who's never

managed a football club their new international manager.

Well, I think, like anyone else who takes this job,

you'll give it body and soul,

because you know what the national team means to people.

Andy, of course, had played for Partick Thistle,

but he wasn't regarded as a football manager

in the way of Shankly and Stein,

Ferguson, even, at Ferguson's age.

Well, what you've got to remember, back in those days,

it was really strange for a non-football type

to get such a big job.

Roxburgh has been a teacher.

He had coached youth teams at international level.

This was not the usual route for a Scotland manager,

and his appointment was greeted with disdain

by Scotland's ultra-traditionalist press.

In some respects, that actually caused quite a, kind of...

fury within football,

which fascinates me beyond belief.

You get people that seem to...

..hate education.

They have a kind of anti-intellectual attitude towards things.

And there was still a lot of people, journalists particularly,

who still yearned for the idea that we were an industrial nation.

The media liked their football managers cast in a certain mould.

Andy Roxburgh certainly didn't fit it.

Historically, if you were a teacher, you weren't a hard pro footballer.

Your brains were all in your head instead of in your feet, you know?

That kind of...feeling pervaded the game, I think.

But I don't know how many European Championships there have been -

I think 16, maybe 17.

And Scotland have only qualified twice

for a European championship.

And it was two schoolteachers that qualified Scotland -

Andy Roxburgh and myself.

They took techniques gleaned from the classroom,

and provided new insights into the opposition for the players.

We did overhead transparencies and things -

we showed the key players in the opposition,

we showed the shape of the opposing team,

any attributes that players had,

how they took free kicks, corners, throw-ins -

we did all that.

I mean, that was great preparation.

We never played a game where our team didn't know

everything about the opposition.

These techniques proved successful.

Roxburgh led Scotland to the Italia 90 World Cup.

But this approach could only pay off

if the homework could be done properly.

Their first opponents -

Costa Rica.

We didn't have every last detail about Costa Rica.

They had almost been training for about five or six months,

and everything hidden.

And so it was very difficult for us to know, at the time,

exactly what we were going to face.

We make one error -

a defensive error.

You lose the one goal

and, of course, everybody's going shock, surprise...

And there goes the final whistle.

Costa Rica have beaten Scotland.

And I'm afraid we've lived up, once again, to the reputation that

playing against nations who seemingly, at the outset,

we ought to beat,

we come a cropper.

I don't know why we're surprised about it at all,

cos it happens so often.

That week after that defeat,

looking back,

was probably the most interesting week I've ever spent

in football management.

This was the real reality

of football, at that level.

You've lost a game

where the expectations were that you should win it.

And you've to play the next weekend.

You've to play against a team that had only lost one game in two years.

How you deal with that?

And the newspaper front page has got I should get the sack.

And what happened there was, we simply...

It's crisis management time, right?

We literally had to close ranks.

The press now covered sport in a much more aggressive manner.

Football regularly made front-page headlines,

and the attacks were more personal than before them.

When I first started Scottish football,

there was still competition, there was still...

a keenness to break stories, and to break the news, obviously.

But there was still a sense that you were on the same team.

Quite often, journalists and players,

they wouldn't have been on that big a difference in wage.

They'd have probably, you know, drank in the same places,

been in the same social circles, etc.

Does it perhaps mean you've got a different relationship?

Was that relationship always very healthy before, if you were,

actually, you know,

operating in the same social circles as players?

Probably, at times, that compromised you a bit as a journalist.

So it's a different environment.

Going back to my time, we all had pals.

You'd go and have a beer with them...

with the journalists. That doesn't happen today.

It's a different world today.

You know, the players today are closeted and protected.

And the press get them for such a short period of time.

And they're guarded in what they say. There's no...

As I understand it, there's no friendships any more

between the written journalist and big-name footballers.

It's not something that they try and create for themselves.

They're not interested.

The point is you're still in the World Cup.

Now, you've to then...you've to face Sweden,

a team that had - again, I repeated - only lost one game in two years.

So people kept asking me, "Oh, what about your job?"

and things like that. "You're going to be out of a job."

And of course my reaction to that was, "At this moment in time,

"I'm irrelevant."

We were so focused, right?

We just literally obliterated everything that was

going on round about us.

Scotland needed to win their game against Sweden

to have a chance of progressing to the next round.

Roxburgh, pilloried by the press, decided to bypass them.

What people forget is that the staff and the players and

everything like that, you know -

that we're also fans.

We've not to behave like fans when we go to the game,

in the sense that, you know, we have got to do our job.

And so I'd this daft idea that...

And people thought I was nuts, I think, at the time -

I decided that, although we at that time used to wear a jacket and a tie

and things like that, on the bench,

I decided to wear my tartan scarf.

I just happened to have my tartan scarf on me.

So...

And I put this on cos, for me, it was symbolic.

It's almost like a...

It's a mixture of a kind of plea to say,

"Look, genuinely, I am a Scotland fan.

"You know, I want to be one of yours."

And it was almost as if he was appealing to the fans

over the heads of the media,

who had this deep resentment towards the man.

Every seat occupied - a capacity crowd of over 36,000 people.

The banners from every conceivable part of Scotland.

One or two less complimentary than others.

This banner said,

"Don't worry, Andy - your P45's in the post."

Of course, everybody - especially me -

I burst out laughing, you know?

And it just broke the tension as we were going in.

CHEERING

Wearing a traditional symbol of national identity

had helped to galvanise the fans.

But that wasn't enough.

A few days later, Scotland were ejected by Brazil.

Muller got the final touch.

But that didn't stop Andy.

He would continue to wear his scarf and address the fans

for the rest of his time as manager.

"Gie's a speech, Andy!"

This is getting a habit, everybody.

RAUCOUS CHEERING

You'd better believe it!

The boys are really, really upset that they let you down.

SARCASTIC CHEERING

Don't worry about it - they'll be right back again.

And they're going to come out and see you.

SINCERE CHEERING

Scotland's place in international football was about to face

bigger challenges than a hostile media.

The Berlin Wall came down...

..setting the path for the reunification of Germany.

Emotions so intense that this has been

a carnival that people here simply don't want to end.

The east and west German teams unified, playing under

one banner for the first time in post-war international competition.

West Berliners are now convinced that anything is possible,

and that the reunification of their divided city

is no longer just a dream.

The Iron Curtain had torn.

By 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was formalised.

The team still played, but under a new name -

the CIS,

the Confederation of Independent States.

The Soviet parliament today formally voted the USSR and itself

out of existence.

In 1992, Scotland returned to an international tournament

and into the European Championships for the first time,

up against teams that reflected a changing world order.

The night we saw the draw it was like,

"Oh, wait a minute - what are we getting?"

Because at that time, I mean, obviously,

Germany and Holland and what was the Soviet Union...

And, of course, at that time you're saying, "Wait a minute, here..."

You know, what a draw to get!

But then we'd earned the right to be there.

Klinsmann trying to hold off.

And a fine effort there.

Malpas backpedalling.

Effenberg's cross, a very awkward one...

The ball is in the net!

The final whistle goes.

Germany are the winners.

The Cold War had ended,

and Scotland's match against the CIS would be the last time

this former superpower would play international football.

And he's scored for Scotland!

I think they might just have got caught with

a wee bit of complacency.

I think they might have thought, "Scotland won't, you know,

"they won't have anything to play for here."

CHEERING

And it's Brian McClair's first goal for Scotland!

We didn't realise that we had to at least win that last match

to say, "Well, this was a team that was worth being there."

..Gary McAllister.

3-0 to Scotland!

Yeah, it was tough.

But, then, that's the name of the game, you know...

is to be in competitions like that...

..and give it our best shot.

Scotland were out of another competition.

From this point onwards, they would find it increasingly

difficult to qualify for international tournaments,

as 15 newly born nations crowded onto the European scene.

The interesting thing was that, at that very moment,

a whole range of new independent countries and states and

republics were emerging,

all of whom subsequently applied for and got UEFA and FIFA membership.

And they came back to haunt Scotland.

Throughout the next 20 years it didn't matter if it was

Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia or any of these independent states,

they came back to haunt Scotland.

During this re-emergence of smaller nations across Eastern Europe,

the UK constitution was also under strain, after the election of

a fourth Conservative government in a row.

Despite the economic blows it had suffered in the early 1980s,

as the policies of the Conservative government took hold,

by the 1990s, Scotland's confidence was growing.

Between the late '80s and late 90s,

Scottish society, and especially the economy of Scotland,

was transformed.

We had financial services, tourism,

an enlarged public sector,

high-quality scientific research

leading into high-quality manufacture.

That's a much more diversified

and resilient economic system.

And that's one reason we have seen

a substantial growth in national confidence.

It was an interesting time for Scotland and England to face

each other on the football field.

These two nations had expressed their differences on the pitch

for centuries.

It's the oldest international fixture in football -

played annually from 1872 until 1989.

This tie, with its epic history and rivalry,

has regularly been a hostile contest.

Even when that first whistle blows,

it is war, it is a battle,

it is graft, it is...

You do get stuck in.

There's obviously a lot of bite and a lot of steel,

still, in the games, as there were when we played.

I think, well, there's more to the game than just the 90 minutes.

Everything else comes into it. It shouldn't, but it does.

If you're living in bed with an elephant,

as the Scots were - in bed with the English elephant -

then there was a tremendous incentive

for David to beat Goliath.

In 1996, Scotland qualified for the European Championships again,

this time to be held in England.

Now in charge,

Craig Brown took his squad to the back yard of their biggest

rivals where, to add to the drama,

Scotland were drawn to play the hosts in their second game.

I was really, more or less, told by the chief executive,

"Listen, if we don't qualify

"for the European Championships, and it's in England,

"you know the consequences."

I understood that.

I would have been so ashamed, embarrassed.

I definitely would have...

would have emigrated, I think.

Because it was in England,

so you had to qualify.

At the opening ceremony,

it was clear that tension was ramping up.

Big cheer for Scotland, in the spirit of friendship.

CROWD BOOS

Obviously, this is the old enemy -

Scotland V England.

But I'm hoping we don't have any trouble.

If it is, it won't be from us, that's for sure.

The Euro 96, of course, flash back -

it's 30 years on from England winning the World Cup in 1966.

And I think, in parts of the way, because Scotland drew England,

but much of the focus was actually on England,

in lots of ways I think you could start to see a fray between

these two nations that had always been great rivals anyway.

You see, Scotland was never an assimilated nation.

It was never assimilated to England.

Scotland's relationship with England was one of a dual identity -

Scottishness and Britishness.

It's a kind of...

How would you put it? It's a politics of identity

that doesn't threaten the union.

None of Scotland's symbols of identity were meant to

threaten the union, because they prospered so much from it.

It was a wonderful feeling, to beat the English on the sporting

field, but that didn't necessarily mean that you then went on

to destroy the union of 1707.

That union was beginning to change.

Labour campaigned on a promise of devolution for Scotland,

in the run-up to the 1997 general election.

UK-wide broadcasters often found it hard to make the distinction

between England and Britain.

I remember, vividly,

that when shows that were on air, like TFI Friday or whatever,

they were kind of cheering on the England team of that time.

Well...

You've really done it this evening.

You've picked a great TFI Friday to tune into.

And you kind of felt that you were watching telly in a foreign nation.

And maybe you were.

Of course, it could be

the first time we've won anything for 30 years.

England, of course. I'm talking about England.

I apologise to the one person in Scotland that's watching -

we've got one person in Scotland, three people in England, watching.

Scotland were drawn against England.

England were dominating the airwaves.

The game was being played at "the home of football - Wembley".

The odds were stacked against Scotland for this momentous match.

CHEERING

Gary McAllister's penalty miss will be one of those things that

will be written about and discussed forever.

What actually did happen, because the ball moves -

now it may just have been that it was on a bauble of turf,

it may be that it wasn't placed properly on the spot,

all sorts of rational explanations, but of course,

Scots fans run to the irrational,

which is that, somehow, some mysterious force -

Uri Geller in a helicopter -

had put a spell on the pitch, all those kind of things.

Anything to try and change the result of that game.

But, you know what?

We can't.

We got beat.

After the game, passion descended into violence,

as fighting broke out between rival fans.

Three years later, Scotland played England yet again -

this time in a play-off for Euro 2000.

The first leg took place in Glasgow,

and was dubbed "The Battle of Britain".

You had to calm yourself to play in that Scotland/England play-off,

because there was so much at stake.

It was the old enemy, who hated one another.

It was one of the best games...

I've ever played in.

CROWD BOOING AS GOD SAVE THE QUEEN PLAYS

The atmosphere, I kid you not,

when the national anthems went out on that park,

I could not hear the English national anthem.

Scholes has made a darting run to the edge of the area.

It's Paul Scholes!

And it's 1-0!

He did what he does so well.

There was a level of violence in the aftermath of the game in Glasgow

that had not been seen when Scotland played any other team.

'Are you getting that, aye?'

'Are you getting the English coming to cause trouble?'

The return leg took place in London.

Thousands of Scots made the trip to witness England's last

competitive game at Wembley.

We gave them the fright of their lives, down at Wembley.

And beating the English, 1-0 -

OK, we're out the tournament,

but hearing the Scottish fans

singing louder than the English...

The English were silent.

I think it was the last major game at the old Wembley.

So, nice for us Scots to beat the English.

The Scotland/England match always inspired a high level of passion.

With visionary insight, Jock Stein, some 40 years earlier,

had expressed reservations about the importance of the fixture.

Jock Stein once said,

and I can remember him saying it in an interview,

explaining why he didn't think it was a good idea

for Scotland to play England every year.

An astonishing thing for Scotland fans to think about.

You know, this is the great icon, the greatest manager...

Scottish manager, who ever lived.

Jock Stein says, "It's no' a great idea."

Why did he say it wasn't a good idea?

Well, of course, for somebody who had the vision that Stein had,

he realised if you invested all of your passion,

all of your commitment, all of your energy,

into that big fixture

and set your success or failure against that fixture...

You know, when we won in '67...

Yeah, but we didn't qualify for '66,

although we had a fine and outstanding side.

I can exactly see what Jock Stein was getting at.

It was not just football as a substitute for national

expression through so many other ways,

but also the Scotland/England game

was a substitute for real success in football.

Meanwhile, Scotland's political engagement had increased,

as could be seen by the overwhelming vote for devolution

in the referendum of 1997

and the opening of Parliament in 1999.

Scotland would never be the same again.

The Scottish Parliament gave Scotland

a greater sense of itself in a rapidly changing world.

But its football team had lost their place on the international stage.

Craig Brown may have been Scotland's most successful manager,

but even his time with the team had an expiry date.

It was the last, my fourth campaign, when we failed to qualify,

and I thought, "I cannae stay on."

I told the players first.

And, you know, I think one or two were...

quite happy, but I think most, I would like to think most...

were sorry.

I actually thought the next appointment was an inspired one.

The choice of Craig Brown's successor

reflected the fact that football had become increasingly international.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

This really is a fairly momentous day for Scottish football.

I don't have to tell you all that this is the first time

that Scotland has had a national coach who's not a Scot.

Please call me...

Berti MacVogts.

POLITE LAUGHTER

You know, he was different -

he had a different approach to things.

You know, and...

the first thing I remember was, the night before games...

He had a meeting the night before games,

and he had the drinks trolley come in and, you know,

a glass of wine or a beer, the night before the game.

It's something that, you know...

I'd never experienced before.

But it was more just to get everybody talking and

get preparing for the next day, rather than...

having a good old drinking session.

But it was different.

Dadu with a chance!

They don't score often, but

they've picked on Scotland to do so.

And it's Moldova 1, Scotland 0.

Poor results against the likes of the Faroes and Moldova

meant the Berti Vogts experiment had failed.

After two and a half years, he was sacked.

Walter Smith was brought in to turn around the team's fortunes.

I think Scotland have a chance of qualifying for the World Cup finals.

Like every other manager,

you go in and you hope that you would have an upturn in results.

Scotland didn't qualify for 2006 under Walter Smith,

but did see an improvement in results.

Their ranking shot up 61 places.

Alex McLeish took over, and built on some of the results achieved

under Walter Smith's leadership.

He's going for...GOAL!

James McFadden scores the best goal he's scored for his country.

Absolutely sensational!

And it's over -

it is all over at the Parc des Princes!

Tonight, in Paris, they take a huge step forward

to returning to the European elite.

Tonight, Scotland are kings.

That win against France meant Scotland were one win away

from qualification for Euro 2008.

Italy maybe the world champions, but they were rocked

against Australia in the quarterfinals.

We'd a bad start.

We fought back brilliantly.

Takes a deflection... Lee McCulloch against the goalkeeper... It's in,

by Scotland captain Barry Ferguson.

The mid week before the Italy game,

I got a phone call from an Italian journalist, a girl.

And she said, "Do you really think that UEFA will allow

"France and Italy not to qualify?"

I said, "Ooh, wait a minute - this is a bit controversial,

"cos we don't say things like that in Scotland."

She said, "Oh, look, listen, Mr McLeish,

"the whole of Italy is talking about this.

"If there's a 50-50...

"...the referee will favour the Italians or France."

Chiellini has challenged well.

Hutton overran it.

It's a free kick, but it's a Scotland free kick.

And it comes to nothing - the Italians are through.

That was great.

Ach, it was...it was terrible, because

I was so convinced about it, that that's why

the disappointment of it was absolutely devastating.

Alex McLeish resigned.

George Burley was next to take on the team...

..and their egos.

I mean, I don't think you go in blind...

..to any managerial job or especially international,

cos the international job...

you can't go and buy players, you can't take players on loan,

so that's your squad and you've got to get on with it.

And Scotland hadn't - still haven't -

qualified for a long time

for European and World Cup Championships.

So it was never going to be an easy one.

There was a lot of strong personalities.

And that's the way it was.

I didn't particularly enjoy dealing with some of them at times,

but that's football.

As a manager, I've got to try and get the best out of them.

The influx of big-money into the game had seen club football

take precedence over country, for some.

There was a lot of cliques at that time, a lot of groups -

there was the Rangers group and there was the Celtic group,

and it was others and then the others...

It was a lot of hard work because you had so many big -

with Rangers, especially -

so many big egos and so many powerful figures.

George asked me if I'd be interested in taking up

a coaching position with the national team.

I was still a Celtic player and there was players in there

from Rangers and other clubs that maybe felt that having

a Celtic player on the coaching staff wasn't right.

But I felt that George himself didn't manage the group well enough.

Scotland were hoping to reach the World Cup in South Africa.

They had just lost to Holland,

and faced Iceland in the next qualifying match.

The next game was all-important.

And it was obviously a huge match for the country.

That night, the Scotland squad were staying at the team hotel

at Loch Lomond.

Most of the team turned in for the night,

but captain Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor

propped up the bar into the morning,

just three days before the next game.

So it was like damage limitation then, because...

..punters had seen the players drinking all night

and all that sort of thing,

and that's not something that we encourage or wanted.

Barry let himself down.

And let the team down.

There's no doubt about that.

Playing for Scotland had once been a dream.

But now that honour had lost its shine,

at least for some.

I think it could have been handled better from within.

Barry's actions were not those of a captain of Scotland

and a top professional.

It's happened before in Scotland, as I know,

where it's got, maybe, brushed a little bit under the carpet.

But in this day and age, with the media,

usually something breaks out.

Sidelined for the next match,

the disgraced players only made matters worse.

Barry Ferguson never played for Scotland again.

Burley's squad failed to qualify.

His tenure ended in failure.

Craig Levein inherited a broken and depleted squad,

but his reign would be remembered for another infamous night.

You know, the idea was to get over there, come away with a draw.

People say you shouldn't do that.

But we had a lot of problems in the

attacking area of the team, at that time.

Levein decided to try something new, and raised eyebrows by playing

a surprising shape with no recognised forwards.

There goes plan A for Craig Levein.

The 4-6-0 formation against the Czech Republic

would ultimately dog his tenure as manager.

If I had the opportunity to do it again,

I would have done the same thing,

but I would have put two more

recognised strikers in and just asked them to drop back.

Yeah, I got criticism I didn't expect.

But I think it was frustration,

but it became a bit of a stick to hit me with.

And, you know...

it comes right down to I gave them the stick, so...

I've no complaints about it.

And the wheel kept moving.

Now it was the turn of Gordon Strachan.

He had what was seen as the easier task of qualifying Scotland

for Euro 2016.

Easier, because there were now eight more places in the competition.

I thought...

Well, why not? Who else is going to do it? I'll do it.

And better me doing it than a young manager.

And I think it's at a good stage in my life, where I do want to coach,

I don't have to deal with the nonsense that comes with players,

I meet guys who are generally feeling good about themselves.

Scotland failed to qualify for yet another international tournament,

making it nine in a row.

But, despite that, Strachan has been given another chance -

to get Scotland to the 2018 World Cup.

Where it all goes wrong,

there's absolutely...there's almost a mantra of where it all goes on,

that the press all sing in chorus, after every disappointment.

We've got to sing the chorus about, you know,

the teachers' strike and video games

and not enough resources and the cold weather,

and I think, simply, the problem is

not enough kids playing not enough football.

Scotland is now a confident nation,

clear about her standing in the world.

Her level of political engagement has never been higher.

But despite the unwavering support of the Tartan Army,

the same cannot be said for the national game.

It has failed to keep pace

with the rapid changes in international football.

One of the fascinating things about Scotland,

irrespective of decline,

Scotland, proportionately,

still has more people going to football matches,

week in, week out,

than any other nation in Europe.

That's quite extraordinary.

So you have to say that football matters more to Scottish people

than it means to Finnish people, to Swedish people, whatever.

That's a matter of statistical fact.

Whether it still means what it meant in the 1930s or the 1940s,

I seriously doubt because society has changed,

the workplace has changed,

the patterns of how we receive and gain entertainment has changed...

What Scotland needs is more talented footballers who can compete

at international level.

The question is

how can that be achieved?

If you look at Holland, if you look at France,

if you look at Spain, if you look at other countries,

the kids are not playing on the streets either.

And the kids are playing with the gadgets and the games

and the geeky stuff that they do, so there's no difference, you know?

That's no longer an explanation, because they can produce teams

of outstanding importance and brilliance.

You're working with a group of players that the country's

produced at that particular time.

They are...a limited group.

They're an honest, solid, limited group.

And I have to believe it is a cycle we're in that, one day -

please, God, very soon - will produce another Kenny Dalglish,

or another three or four players that can get us qualified

and make an impression in the World Cup.

Scotland is changing. There is no doubt about it.

I mean, I look upon the referendum on September the 18th as

the big political bang.

We're not quite sure how it's going to shake down,

but the main beneficiaries are one particular political party.

But Scotland's changed. There is a greater sense of ambition,

a greater sense of energy,

a greater sense of not accepting what's gone before,

and this, I think, is about the "yes, we can".

If you look at the history of Hampden Park -

that now, for us, is about memories.

We've now got to look forward to the dreams.

And I'm just the eternal optimist.

We can do it. We can do it.

In a Scotland that has placed so much emphasis on maleness,

on industrial working class,

it's lassies that are better.

SHE SHOUTS

Somebody described Twitter to me as

a bit like entering a pub when everybody's on their ninth pint.

We need to change.

We need to do things differently.

If you looked at the cold harsh reality of the quality fare

that's been served up, I think you would go and jump in the Clyde.