Tartan Terribles

Anthony McIntyre ⚽Einstein's definition of insanity 🧠 "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

It comes up for air frequently enough in a range of situations where people seem to perpetually fuck up while thinking that they never will despite using the same fuck up ingredients that they have used on all previous occasions.

Hope dies last - Studs Turkel used it as a title for one of his books - even when the life support machine sustaining it detects no sign of brain activity that might allow hope to live. As artificial as Astroturf. Which, given their inability to play good soccer, seems the type of surface the Scottish national football team, has been practicing on for this European championship . . . perhaps for every championship it ever competed in.

Perceived by its followers as the Tartan Terriers, and by everyone else as the Tartan Terribles, this is a team that has never flattered to deceive. It never flattered at any time. The second oldest international soccer team, it has never yet progressed to the second stage of an international tournament. Yeah, it could beat Dumbarton, maybe even Partick Thistle on a good day, but as a serious contender for a long hotel stay on international duty, forget about it. A lot like Bus Eireann, they simply fail to turn up.

It is not the team that deceives their fans but the fans who deceive themselves. Scotland has a record in the international game like Leeds have in playoffs. Last night against Hungary they played ping pong for around 80 minutes before falling to the sucker punch in the 99th minute. Yet their precarious position going into the game meant that the minimum they could settle for was a handsome win. The whole purpose of playing was to score, not soiree. Not a single shot on target, they partied on the edge of the cliff before going over. Yeah, they should have had a penalty but any overturning of that bad call would have been rendered irrelevant given their comparable goal disadvantage within the group, courtesy of a thrashing at the hands of Germany.

They played no better against the Hungarians than they did against Germany. The narrow one goal victory was down to Hungary being as poor as Scotland. Didi Hamman called it right - neither of the two sides deserve to grace the last 16. And yet the faces of their supporters in the stands seem to have suggested that this was a surprise, when in fact there was no shock jock within a hundred years of last night's clash.

Back in 1978 during the Argentina World Cup it wasn't only the Scottish fans that lost their minds in the mass hypnotism that had so entranced Ally's Army. In Cage 11 fellow prisoners were telling me that Scotland could win the World Cup. My ripostes that Scotland could not win the Scottish League won derision. The cage O/C, Jim McCann, bantered that I was a bigot while Joe Rafter, convinced that Jock would shock, predicted them to lift the Jules Rimet. Maybe they had been sipping too much of the poteen Daithi Power had been brewing. I explained to anybody who would listen that Scotland's first match would see them pitched against Peru; that a player named Cubillas - whom I remembered from the 1970 World Cup in Mexico - would take Scotland apart.

That game went pretty much as I expected, with Cubillas netting two goals in a 3-1 victory for Peru. After that, my prediction that Argentina would lift the trophy on their home patch was taken a bit more seriously. Of course, at 20 years of age, I gleefully exercised all the bragging rights I could lay claim to.

I had watched Scotland a couple of times at Windsor Park where every second year they would play in the Home Internationals. I attended the game where George Best tormented the Scottish defence, standing right behind the goal when Ronnie Simpson saved a penalty but was unable to stop the Clements goal after a pass from Best. Scotland lost. Scotland always seem to lose.

It has been this way my entire life since I first watched a live soccer game in 1963 at Windsor Park. I won't live long enough to watch a game in 2063 but I am assured of this: Scotland, even by then, will not have made it out of the first round of a major international competition.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.