The Scottish domestic season might be over, but the qualification campaign for World Cup 2010 goes on. Scotland are not action until August – a home game against Norway – but on the 6th and 10th June, Scotland’s fellow Group 9 hopefuls will be wanting to edge a few points closer to making the finals.
Our stuttering World Cup qualifying campaign can be helped along a great deal with a series of fortuitous results. Norway, with their two games in hand could in theory leapfrog Scotland into second place; to do that they’d need to beat Macedonia on Saturday and The Netherlands next Wednesday evening. Defeat for the Norwegians in both of those games – the ideal scenario for Scotland – would effectively end any hopes they have of reaching second spot.
Two real threats to Scotland’s place in the table comes in the shape of Macedonia and Iceland, who play each other on Wednesday. Iceland play runaway group leaders Holland tomorrow in Rekjavik and look unlikely to pull of a shock result against the Dutch. The group leaders, who lead Scotland by 8 points go into their next two games boosted by their highest placing in the FIFA rankings for some time – 2nd behind European Champions Spain and one place ahead of bitter rivals West Germany.
As always seems to be the case with Scotland’s Qualification campaigns, our progress depends largely on the misfortunes of others.
Macedonia, against whom Scotlandlost their opening Group 9 game conclude their roundof games with a home tie against Iceland, but go into their games without the coach who oversaw the win against Scotland. Coach Srecko Katanec resigned after the defeat to Hollandat the beginning of April following a dressing room bust-up with star player Goran Pandev.
George Burley is all too familair with with player conflict in this campaign. Following Kris Boyd’s resignation from the Scotland set-up and the whole saga around Allan McGregor and Barry Ferguson, Burley can only hope that new Macedonia coach Mirsad Jonuz (who formerly managed the Macedonian U-21’s) has not had enough time to settle himself and the team, and that at best they lose or draw.
Scotland’s next game is against Egil Olsen’s men in Oslo on August 12 where victory would present an excellent chance of qualification. If he has recovered from injury Celtic skipper Stephen McManus will captain Scotland, after Barry Ferguson was stripped of the captain’s armband following the Boozegate scandal.
Following the Norway game, Scotland conclude the qualifying campaign with two home games: Macedonia visit on September 5th, followed four days later by the return visit of The Netherlands on the 9th. By that time, the battle for second place should be a lot clearer. Though we’ve beaten the Dutch before at Hamdpen, thanks to a James McFadden first-half goal during the Euro 2006 qualifiers, the lack-luster performance against the Dutch back in March (3-0) is not something we want to repeat; Burley and the Tartan Army can only hope that by that time, the final game against the Dutch is not a ‘must-win’ affair.
Related posts:
- Scotland squad named for crunch World Cup qualifiers
- Scotland the Brave
- Norway v Scotland Preview (or: the art of self-destruction)
- Scottish Football’s Four to Follow
- Scotland 0-1 The Netherlands
Tags: Group 9, Scotland, World Cup 2010