- Scotland sack Burley
EURO 2000
The demise of Scottish international football has been a slow but painful one. Their Euro 2000 qualification campaign started well for Craig Brown's men with wins over Lithuania, Estonia and Faroe Islands. However, they could only manage a play off spot as they came up against the might of Czech Republic, who won their group without dropping any points.
Despite their solid effort in the group stages, they came up against England in a 'Battle of Britain' play off clash. England put themselves in a great position in the first leg, winning 2-0 at Hampden Park, and eventually prevailed. Don Hutchison scored at Wembley to ensure a nervy finale but, in the end, a 1-0 win at the home of English football was not enough.
WORLD CUP 2002
Despite Brown's transformation of Scotland's fortunes during his six-year-reign, his side failed to qualify for a major final for the second successive time in 2002. With a smaller and seemingly winnable group, on paper at least, the Scots could not even qualify for the play offs, finishing third behind Croatia and Norway.
This qualifying campaign led to Brown's resignation and paved the way for a big name star to join their ranks.
EURO 2004
The big name manager in question turned out to be German Berti Vogts, who had led his own country to becoming European Champions in 1996. Despite being unbeaten at home, Scotland were poor away from home in the qualification for Euro 2004.
A 2-2 draw with Faroe Islands and 0-1 loss to Lithuania left them behind Germany and facing the prospect of another play off, this time against the Netherlands. Although James McFadden put his country a goal up going into the second leg in Amsterdam, a Ruud van Nistelrooy hat-trick helped Holland to a 6-0 victory and humiliation for Vogts and Scotland.
WORLD CUP 2006
Vogts led Scotland to more heavy losses, 5-0 to France, 4-0 to Wales, 4-1 to South Korea and 3-0, but stayed on to lead them into their next qualification battle. This time he failed to even get them into the play offs, a 1-1 draw with Moldova putting paid to their ambitions relatively early in the campaign.
The German resigned soon after, citing 'disgraceful abuse' from the Scottish media. His reign ended with Scotland in a record low 77th position in the FIFA World Rankings.
EURO 2008
Walter Smith took over from Vogts for the tail-end of Scotland's 2006 campaign and started the Euro 2008 one perfectly, with victory over France. His part of this campaign was small, though, as he took over at Rangers midway through and Scotland turned to the man he replaced in Glasgow, Alex McLeish, to keep their good form going.
Scotland completed a double over France, winning 1-0 in Paris, and ran Italy close twice but those two nations eventually prevailed and Scotland were left heart-broken as losses to Georgia and Italy prevented their team from qualifying. McLeish resigned, to join Birmingham City, shortly afterwards and George Burley was installed as the 'Tartan Army' were seeded second in the draw for the 2010 World Cup qualifying.
WORLD CUP 2010
Despite their high seeding, Scotland yet again failed to qualify for the tournament and finished third in their group behind the Netherlands and Norway.
Their latest campaign included disappointing losses to Macedonia (1-0) and Norway (4-0) and embarrassing breaches of discipline by some important players. Captain Barry Ferguson and goalkeeper Allan McGregor went on a drinking session which led to them being dropped to the bench for the game against Iceland. The pair continued to 'let the country down' by making v-signs during the match.
By David Brenchley
Source: DSG
