For some of the more battle-weary scribes, who have so many lines on our increasingly anguished fizzogs the Tartan Army members ask if they can get a cheap train to Mount Florida on them, it doesn’t actually feel that long ago since the World Cup finals in France 1998.
But then you have a blether with a young, fresh-faced member of the current Scotland squad and you quickly realise that footage of, say, John Collins winking at the camera in the pre-match line-up against Brazil or Craig Burley’s gap-toothed grin of goal scoring glory against Norway may as well be accompanied by a silent film pianist and a dog-eared pamphlet of historical reference notes from the curator of the Scottish Football Museum.
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“I was born in 1995 so I would have just been three,” said Ryan Christie as he reflected – or not as the case may be – on Scotland’s last appearance in a major championship in the dim and distant past of two decades ago. “It’s frustrating for the whole nation. It’s something that needs to be changed, and to have the power, it’s in our hands to change it and hopefully get this nation to a national competition. It would be a pretty big feat. You need to realise the opportunity you have and hopefully grasp it.”
After such a prolonged period in the international wilderness, the weight of desperate expectation that gets heaped on to various generations of Scottish footballers is akin to the hefty, creaking burden that Atlas had to bear.
This week’s encounter with Costa Rica, the first match of Alex McLeish’s second term at the helm, is hardly a win or bust affair but Christie, the Aberdeen midfielder who is on loan from Celtic, is savouring the opportunity to be part of a new dawn and revelling in the pressure that comes with the territory of being a bright hope in a fitba daft nation. It’s all part of the learning process.
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“I think probably one of the things at Aberdeen that’s helped me is having a pressure week in, week out, an expectation to win and having to deal with that,” said the 23-year-old former Inverness player. “It’s something for an attacking player as well when people are looking at you to create something in the game and you have to be able to handle that.
“When I was younger at Inverness I never really had that so that has definitely helped me. It’s just down to confidence. The manager (at Aberdeen) has been very good with me, he’s managed to keep my confidence really high going into every game.
“It’s at times like this, getting selected for the international squad, that it pays off but I never thought at the start of the season it would get this far.
“At Inverness, it was a very good team. Winning the cup almost came out of nowhere and it was a freak season for Inverness but at Aberdeen it’s a bit different, you’re expected to go for silverware and be at the top end of the table. So it’s definitely helped me as a player and it gives me more experience to step up to the international level.”
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