Daz1982

To be honest, what is the point in merely qualifying unless the aim is to win it outright!

Surely the North and South American countries now have to be grouped together. Mexico and USA already effectively have a bye to qualify for each tournament. New Zealand also together with every other country in Oceania should also by lumped into the Asian qualifying section. World qualifying groups would resolve the issue although that would be extremely difficult and would mean the entire football calendar would have to be synchronized.

It goes without saying that all Scotland games matter to us all. However, surely at some point you actually want to follow a winning team and witness some success? If it's just a carry on and a few pints and laughs you're after, you can do that any weekend.

Yes, winning a tournament should be the ultimate aim. Think you misread it, I meant we should at least aim for the ultimate prize, as opposed to aiming for 2nd / 3rd place finishes before a ball has been kicked.

I agree, a boycott seems to be the only option left to get our point across. Think an empty Hampden at the Slovenia or England (better option) match next year would get people talking. Our ongoing negligence and continued failure out our NATIONAL sport has to be addressed, or else what is the point? No more acceptance of failure and mediocrity can be accepted. Our aim should not only be to qualify (lets do that first) for a major tournament, our ultimate aim should be to reach the latter stages and WIN, yes WIN a tournament. That should be the aim at the very least. No more 'poor wee us canna compete because we're too wee and too sh1te', lets aim for the very top. Look at Uruguay, population of 3.4 million.....2 x World Cups and a record 15 x Copa Americas won. WE SIMPLY DO NOT HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR FAILURE. If anyone reading this thinks I am being unrealistic or too ambitious, then I would say that YOU are part of the problem.

Yep, last few years have been shattering both in a football and political sense. Although, part of me is glad that all the home nations and Eire are progressing because it gets it right up the sfa, Scottish football in general and the pathetic can't do mentality of our nation. Will we ever wake up and strive to do better? Doubt it

It is a very good representation of the pathetic downtrodden nation that we are.

Yet again we will be watching a major tournament unfold on TV this summer. The last decade + has been a terrible period for our national team. Even when we did qualify for tournaments in the past we always flopped in terms of how far we progressed. When you consider other nations in Europe and their achievements at a particular tournament, I think we may have the worst record! Here is other countries best finsihes as I remember them: England - WC Winners N Ireland - WC Last 16 Rep Ireland - WC QF Wales - WC QF Sweden - WC SF, EC SF Denmark - EC Winners Poland - WC QF Romania - WC QF Bulgaria - WC SF Turkey - WC SF Russia - WC QF Greece - EC Winners Italy - WC & EC Winners Germany - WC & EC Winners France - WC & EC Winners Spain - WC & EC Winners Portugal - WC SF & EC Final I may have missed some countries out or got some of their final positions slightly wrong. However, it really does put into perspective how we have truely underchieved as a country at our national sport. When you consider some of the players and teams which we've had in the past it's remarkable! This argument could also include nations from outside Europe when you consider that countries like Uruguay, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Senegal, Cameroon, Australia and South Korea have progressed further in a World Cup than we ever have. We may have qualified for more individual tournaments than some of the countries mentioned above but we have yet to have our big moment. Will this ever change?

[quote name="jock strap" post="259919" timestamp="1451762496 I still try to remember that for a country of our size, we have done not to bad overall. Think that viewpoint is one of the main reasons why we as a nation accept mediocrity far to easily. Uruguay have a population 'only' 3.5 million and yet they've won 2 x world cups and a record 14 copa americas. Football is our national sport, therefore we should be aiming for the very best, not simply being content with making up the numbers.

The tmo has intervened effectively throughout this World Cup, and yet his silence during the last few crucial moments was deafening. Why was the late tackle on Hogg not looked at and the penalty incident? We do our best to feck things up, we don't need the officials working against us too! As Ian McG said in the after match analysis, would the ref had made the same decisions against NZ or indeed Australia in this match? I doubt it.

Yep, always think maybe we are going to do it this time, but somehow you just knew we'd let Australia off the hook! gut wrenching all the same!

Possibly, but all three have reached the later stages of a World Cup within the past 50 years or so, when will our moment come? Hungary - Final 1954 Romania - QF 1994 Bulgaria - SF 1994

Suppose China too given their population.

New Zealand have a population of 'only' 4.5 million and yet continually produce world class rugby union national teams, this ofcourse is their national sport and they would expect nothing less. Thinking about countries and their corresponding national sports, is there any nation who performs worse than us if you exclude small nations such as San Marino

To be fair he did mention that ourselves and the Republic should have been fighting it out for 3rd place due to having similar populations.

I see Urugauy have gotten off to a flyer in the Souh American WC Qualifiers... http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminaries/southamerica/ With a population of only 3.5 million they seem to consistently compete at the highest level, They just thrased Colombia (population 48 million) 3-0. Too many people use the population of our country as an excuse/reason for failure. Craig Brown suggeseted on the radio the other night, that given the populations of our respective group opponents (germany, poland and eire) we should expect/be generally satisfied to finish behind them. This is absolute nonsense in my opinion, football is our national sport and we should not only be looking to compete, we should be aiming to actually WIN a major tournament. Uruguay have won 2 x World Cups and a record 15 Copa Americas, I never hear them playing the 'we're too wee' argument.

Italy also missed out on Euro 92, CIS topped their qualifying group. France also missed out on USA 94. Haven't checked the records but I think Portugal went a long time without qualifying for a worls cup, maybe 1986 - 2002?

Yep, people forget that we had an opportunity to host the Euros, the whole thing died of death the minute our inferiority complex kicked in and we decided to joint bid with Ireland. Yet another example of our country showing absolutely zero ambition and settling for second best. Funnily enough Westminster managed to cough up millions of pounds for a nice new stadium and a failed world cup bid in the years which followed! We must be a complete laughing stock down there and rightly so! Will our country ever get it's act together!?

I agree, we always seem to enter matches with an inferiority complex with the attitude of let's try our best or let's put up a good show. There never seems to be any real desire or ambition to do anything more than make up the numbers.I heard Craig Brown on the radio last night stating what the populations of Germany and Poland are, this according to him is justification for us being happy and satisfied with finishing in 3rd or 4th place. This is complete nonsense in my opinion, football is our national sport and we should be aiming not just to make up the numbers or qualify but to actually produce a team who can WIN a tournament. Uruguay is a great example, population of 3.5 million. They have won a record 15 Copa Americas not to mention 2 x World Cups. I spent some time in Argentina and Uruguay during the 2011 tournament, not once did Uruguay play down their chances or play the 'we're too wee' card, they knocked out Argentina (hosts) and went on to WIN it in their arch rivals backyard. The equivalent would be us winning Euro 96. Would we even begin to dream that this might be possible, or will we forever be happy to just make up the numbers and party like a bunch of clowns win or lose!?

There is no doubt that we were in tough group, however if we had qualified from a weaker group surely that would only disguise the problems within. We put ourselves in a great position but when the heat was on and a big result was required (Georgia away) we simply didn't turn up. When Germany came to town we were too busy falling over ourselves, praising the Germans in every way possible making it seem impossible that we could ever dream of getting any kind of result against them! This inferiority complex pre-match build up was reflected in the performance, on the back foot from the kick off, like rabbits caught in the headlights! Did we ever believe we could actually beat Germany?Of course this has been going on for years now, different managers, players and even fans, but same old end result. Has the confidence and belief of our nation ever been so low? I listened to a phone in earlier today when a caller suggested (I think tongue in cheek) that we are only a region of the UK and that we should compete as the UK in all sports. To be honest it would be hard to argue against this considering what we as a nation voted for last September. I wonder how many of the downtrodden 'scots' who voted this way would be up in arms against such an idea and how many of those would travel to London to watch the home games? It's a sad state of affairs but as a nation we are all too happy just to compete and make up the numbers. There is no real desire and ambition to achieve much more than that, it's deep rooted in our psyche. Until this changes we can only look forward to future failures and hard luck stories.

One is complete rubbish and the other is English, so neither for me.

what pages are they on mate? had a look on a few now but couldn't see any.

Did you know that Lithuania were also down to 10 men!?

Right enough, I should have remembered that as I was at the Norway game too!

I'm sure when we got beat at home by Belarus 04/05 it was our first home defeat in a WCQ since Wales in 1984/85.