How Scotland's Belgrade glory lifted the pandemic gloom

I remember it being grey. All the time. 

And not even one of those softer touch, barely-distinguishable-from-the-other-40-shades-on-the-paint-color-chart grey. Pure, soul-sucking grey, shoehorned between the pitch-black mornings and nights of 2020’s long winter. The novelty in rolling dishevelled from bed 10 minutes before work while still clocking in with time to spare had long dissipated into that abyss, and summer weekends spent day drinking in the garden – accompanied by whatever the permitted number of people was that week – floated off with it. 

Don’t get me wrong, I was among the lucky ones. Stories of ordinary people breathing their last on ventilators without even a familiar hand to hold, of socially distanced funerals, sudden unemployment, or overflowing hospital wards, mercifully remained a dystopian, abstract concept. 

But still, the grey. 

It was as much a state of mind as it was the view from the living room office window. The Covid-19 pandemic brutally extracted the colour from day-to-day existence, marooning simple joys in the past, and blurring future horizons into an impenetrable fuzz, always just out of reach. 

It was the open-endedness of the whole thing that dragged me down, fuelled by daily insistence from pedestaled politicians that putting timelines on the return of life as we knew it – if it ever did come back – was simply not possible. That, of course, was the nature of the Covid beast; unpredictable, ever-changing, and responsible for making ‘unprecedented times’ an unlikely contender for phrases that should be forever banished to the dustbin of history. 

It’s only when you can’t put a marker down any considerable distance in the future that you realise how important it is to be able to look beyond next week, to see past the prospect of moving down from Level 3 to Level 2 restrictions being a source of elation. It may have been a staple of 2020 small talk, but there was so much longing truth in casually lamenting the lack of ‘something to look forward to’. Anything to take minds off ‘the virus’, whether that be the havoc it wrought on countless lives, or how it infiltrated every minute aspect of our existence. 

Take a test before you go to work, keep behind the threatening-looking lines on the floor when queuing for a coffee, don’t take more than one walk per day, tune in at 5pm for more graphs you don’t really understand other than they look vaguely alarming, get desensitised to the daily announcement of cases, hospitalisations, and deaths as you look out the pots and pans for tonight’s big clap for the NHS. Sometimes, it's difficult to comprehend that it all actually happened. 

Even when pleasures of a previous life were once more permitted for an all-too-brief period, they were never quite the same. Eating that first restaurant meal in several months somewhat lost its magic to two-hour slots, masks whenever you move, bevy bans, and that nagging feeling that someone, somewhere was judging you for even leaving the house in the first place. When every social activity comes with a public health warning that evokes Neil Warnock barking ‘enjoy it, but enjoy it by being fucking disciplined’, it leaves a little something to be desired.  

And then there was the football. 

It certainly resembled the game we know. I’m fairly sure there was a ball, two goals, and 22 players on the pitch. The jerseys were recognisable, the players wearing them the same as they were in March, and yet – compared to what we once knew – the beautiful game was, well... grey. Ghostly stadia will do that to a sport that thrives on the colour and vibrance only the match-going masses can bring. There was a soullessness about it being dutifully played out before unoccupied seats, the swell of the crowd replaced piped in cheers controlled by a broadcaster’s button. 

You could forgive the uninitiated, then, for perhaps believing that football played against the looming spectre of the ‘new normal’ is best forgotten as a comforting stopgap, in place only until the turnstiles were unshackled once more. But there are moments in this silly little game of ours that just matter too much to too many to be in any way diminished by those, for lack of a better term, ‘unprecedented times’. The kind that could have been played on Jupiter and still reduced grown men to tears. 

Belgrade, November 12, 2020. UEFA Euro 2020 play-off final. Serbia vs Scotland. 

Scotland, conspicuous by our absence from major tournaments for 22 long years. Scotland, copyright holders of the term ‘glorious failure’. Scotland, merciless torturers of a fanbase too loyal for its own good, and one, by this point in history, now filled increasingly with a generation of people for whom their country competing on the world stage was about as relatable as the moon landings. 

Not since France ’98 had Flower of Scotland been heard at a major international competition, the intervening period becoming a tragic tale of everything from heart-wrenching near misses to downright humiliation. And now, here we were, 90 minutes away from bringing it all to an end, and not one of those people who spent two decades finding only disappointment in every corner of Europe were allowed in to see it. 

How very Scotland. 

Instead, the eyes of the nation were glued to the TV. Most were in the comfort of home, others made the pilgrimage to pubs on a gamble that it would all be over by the time the 10pm curfew struck. Adherence to limits on household gatherings may just have hit an all-time low that evening. Even now, some might not fancy admitting it, but Jamie Swinney is not one of them. 

Swinney was a Scotland fan long before he took up office as Falkirk’s chief executive, and surely will be long after he departs. For him and his family, this was too important. 

“I’d been going to the games with my dad since I was 11, so this was about 20-odd years in the making,” he recalls. “I had that discussion with him, that the restrictions at the time probably didn’t permit watching the game together, and it was one of the only times during the whole lockdown – and I’m not ashamed to admit it, with all due respect – where I said: ‘we’ve waited 20 years for this, we’re watching it together’.  

“My wife and I went down to my dad’s house to watch it, although we made sure we sat at opposite ends of the living room!  I’d said to myself: ‘this is too important’. I was very observant of the restrictions in general, but this was one of the times where I said I was willing to go against them.” 

If we are all being totally truthful, it was probably a common scene. But while flouting those suffocating rules may have set some stomachs gnawing with guilt, it was secondary to the anxiety arising over what was about to transpire halfway across the continent.  

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John Bleasdale’s house was tense.  

“Usually it’d be ‘I was there’ or ‘I was with my pals down the pub’ but like mostly everybody else I was just in the house,” he said. “I let my oldest boy watch the first half with me, then he went up to his bed, and it was just me for the rest of it, with my wife upstairs with our youngest, who would have been about three months old at this point. 

“So, I’m sitting downstairs trying to be as quiet as possible. Any emotion I went through came out in whispers!” 

Bleasdale is the author of multiple books on the national team, and possessing such a forensic knowledge of our trials and tribulations probably becomes a curse on these occasions, because what else would heighten the feeling of torment more than knowing, more than most, what exactly was at stake? Spoken exactly like someone who had spent countless hours on the subject of Scotland, he confessed: “I was my usual pessimistic self before the game.” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous for a game in my life,” said Swinney. 

And who could blame them? We are, after all, a footballing nation reared on fatalism. 

“We’d had so many disappointments,” Bleasdale continued. “There were failed campaigns and a few play-offs. The fact that we were in another one just made me feel like ‘what’s going to be the next story?’” 

Perhaps, then, the most jarring thing about what unfolded at the Stadion Rajko Mitić that evening is just how comfortable Steve Clarke and his players were for 89 minutes. It was a performance that exuded a composure so at odds with the frantically frayed nerves of the nation that watched on back home. In other words, it was thoroughly un-Scotland. 

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Among Clarke’s most laudable achievements as Scotland manager is his ability to remove the chaos from an exhaustingly frenzied football team. So many of our great underdog results of the past were fraught affairs, grating away at the seat our collective pants. But aside from a notable few, a significant chunk of Clarke’s most notable victories have been achieved with a sense of control that we were just not used to. 

Ryan Christie’s opening goal, stuck with a wondrous reverse of his left boot, should really have been the winning moment that night, such was Scotland’s control of its narrative. Serbia offered little throughout, delivering an oddly meandering display on an occasion that demanded so much more. 

“I thought it would have been backs to the wall, and us trying to see it out,” said Swinney, his palms getting retrospectively sweaty at the thought of what we all expected would happen. “But we were the better team and Serbia created so little.” 

‘We were the better team’.  

Words to send a shudder down the spine of anyone who has suffered Scotland over the previous two decades. I likely said the same to my dad as we twisted together through the emotional rigmarole, me attempting to remain somewhat professional with a match report to write, and him nervously sipping on a beer I was desperate to snatch from his hand. It should, on the balance of play, have been a textbook ‘1-0 and up the road’ job, which would have been no less than Scotland deserved. 

“Before the game, my son had predicted we were going to win 1-0, and come the 89th minute it looked like that might happen,” said Bleasdale. “When Serbia got that corner, I think I remember Ian Crocker on commentary saying he was going to be sick.” 

It’s hard to be certain looking back, so let’s ask him. 

“Yeah, Serbia got a corner, and I said I was feeling sick,” said Crocker. “It all seemed to happen in slow motion.” 

The voice of Scotland games so long, yet Crocker would not ever have uttered a line that captured the emotions of so many people as that set-piece floated onto the head of Luka Jović. His effort took one, sickening bounce off the Belgrade turf and looped beyond the despairing grasp of David Marshall, sending millions of Scottish heads descending into hands that offered no comfort. 

“I was thinking ‘here we go again’,” said Swinney.  

“I sat there with my head in my hands,” said Bleasdale. 

Same, lads. 

Extra-time beckoned but it seemed hope had already left the building. Clarke had substituted several key players, and the following 30 minutes became a survival exercise even Bear Grylls would have passed on. Had it not been for Marshall pawing away a thunderous strike from distance in the Serbian siege, I would not be writing this piece, and perhaps none of you would be excavating your life savings for a trip to Germany this summer. Fate is, indeed, a fickle mistress, and it was not apparent in that half-hour that she was simply toying with us one last time.  

“It would have been an injustice if Serbia had won in extra-time, because we were outstanding for 89 minutes,” said Bleasdale. “We were just hanging on. If my couch wasn’t right next to the wall, I would’ve been hiding behind it.” 

Penalties were at once a relief and a renewed source of dread. Seeing off Israel from 12 yards in the semi-final may have been a source of confidence for the five in dark blue elected to step up, but not for the watching masses. 

Griffiths, scored. Tadić, scored. McGregor, scored. Jović, scored. McTominay, scored. Gudelj, scored. McBurnie, scored. Katai, scored. McLean, scored. 

I keep the above brief so as to not force anyone to relive it for any longer than necessary, to fast-forward to the moment that mattered, the one where Aleksander Mitrović fired to his right and Marshall dived to his left, throwing out those big arms in pure instinct. 

Marshall was one of only a few on that pitch older enough to remember France ’98, and in one action he pushed away every piece of agony that had followed it – battered in Belgium, annihilated in Amsterdam, wee Bertie in the Faroes, Manuel Mejuto González, Iwelumo’s miss, 4-6-0, Harry Kane at the back post, and even when we were skelped by Kazakhstan. 

“I was just jumping around the room, I couldn’t help it,” said Bleasdale. “Then came the text from the wife upstairs – ‘has there been an earthquake, or have Scotland won?’” 

“We were jumping about, but at a distance!” said Swinney. “When we went back up the road from my dad’s I spent about four hours just sitting with a few beers. 

“I couldn’t sleep, I was on an absolute high. I was still up at about 3 in the morning scrolling social media, watching videos. That feeling was genuine euphoria – 20 years of disappointment and pent-up frustration.” 

No one deserved the opportunity to sum up the moment more than Ian Crocker, who had ploughed through the unenviable task of narrating just about all the misery cited above, and not even Marshall’s post-save hesitation could hold him back. 

“I was already away, probably quoting lines from Flower of Scotland and going bonkers,” he laughed. “I’d been thinking about what I wanted to say when it happened for 22 years – and when it actually comes around you don’t quite say what you planned. I’ve since said to David Marshall that if he hadn’t been on his line it would’ve been the biggest reverse gear in commentary history!” 

What followed was a wave of unbridled euphoria, yet one we would perhaps never want to repeat, a joy so unique to its moment in time. This was not just about finally reaching the promised land, it swept us blissfully away from the grimness of the world as it was, wrestled headlines from the greedy pandemic, and put that missing marker down in the uncertain future. Scotland were going to Euro 2020, and nothing could take that away. 

“It allowed us to forget Covid for a while, you could put it to the back of your mind because you were too euphoric with what had happened,” said Swinney. 

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“I don’t think any other country would have had the same reaction as Scotland. And, although I’m biased, I don’t think it’s necessarily a biased thing to say. Football is such a massive part of this country, and our fans are among the most passionate in the world. 

“It’s proven with the amount of people per capita that attend games and the numbers we travel in. Would it have been the same for any other country? They wouldn’t have had all those factors lining up at the same time. For us, it was as special as it could have been. 

“I remember Euro ’96 when I was nine, and at this point, I’m in my mid-30s. I remember crying my eyes out when Paul Gascoigne scored to beat us at Wembley, and now there I was almost crying again.” 

Remember the grey? Not in that moment you didn’t.