It was almost as if Peru and Iran hadn't happened

Attentive readers will have picked up on a small fly in that ointment in that opening paragraph. What those two supporters failed to anticipate – okay, then, what a mate and I failed to anticipate – was that there would be no "opening victory against Costa Rica". This was Scotland, a World Cup and a supposedly no-mark opponent. It was as if Peru and Iran had never happened. What daft, young innocents we were.

So we watched on television at home as Juan Cayasso scored Costa Rica's winner, and we took it as a World Cup-ruining, holiday-ruining disaster. Was it even worth going at all? Well, of course that question never entered our heads, nor those of the others who must have made similar travel plans. A World Cup of 180 minutes was still going to be better than nothing. Scotland being Scotland, they packed plenty of theatre into those two remaining games in the heady June of 1990.

Andy Roxburgh had successfully led a talented squad to qualification along with Yugoslavia and at the expense of France, Norway and Cyprus. Against Costa Rica, Jim Leighton was behind Dave McPherson, Alex McLeish, Richard Gough and Maurice Malpas. Acros the middle it was Roy Aitken, Paul McStay, Jim Bett and Stuart McCall. Mo Johnston and Alan McInally started in attack. McCall had made his Scotland debut only 10 weeks before the finals – "I felt like I was gatecrashing the party," he recalled this week – but he played all three games at Italia '90. "That tournament was typical Scotland. The Costa Rica debacle followed up by Sweden. We felt we'd let the whole nation down, against Costa Rica. I remember going down the tunnel at full-time and people were hanging over, shouting, booing, absolutely gutted."

Cayasso had sent Scotland into a daze. There were four days of grieving, anger, introspection and blame – Johnston and Bett were splashed across the front pages for going out boozing the night after the game – before the circus rolled back into Genoa for the Sweden game. The supporters' reaction was astonishing. The anger had gone, replaced by a swell of passion. There was something in the air that night. The atmosphere instantly electrified even those of us who stumbled into the city off a six-hour coach trip across Italy. The colour and spectacle inside the boxy Stadio Luigi Ferraris was incredible. The noise was deafening. "It really was the most remarkable environment in which to play football," said Roxburgh later.

In the sticky Italian heat, Scotland came back from the dead. "People wrote us off but the Sweden game suited us," said McCall. "It was a British-style game. I would say there were only two or three games in my entire career where I felt it was won in the tunnel before a ball was kicked. That was one of them. We had some warriors: McLeish, Aitken, [Craig] Levein, [Robert] Fleck. Teeth out, squaring up to them. Sweden were bronzed and tanned and we were all thin and red with the sun. Every one of us knew we had let the country, ourselves and our families down against Costa Rica and it was a game we had to win. The fear of losing and letting those fans down again: we just couldn't do it. We owed them."

Ten minutes in, Johnston fired in a corner which McPherson flicked on into the goalmouth. Roxburgh had told McCall to stay on the edge of the penalty area but there he was, lunging into the six-yard box to jab home the opening goal: "I've always been deadly from a yard." By the time he retired McCall had played 40 times for Scotland and that was the only goal he scored. Nine minutes from the end Aitken burst through for a one-on-one chance, should have scored, and was then brought down as he went for a second attempt. Johnston buried the penalty. Sweden pulled one back with five minutes left – of course they did – but the team held on for 2-1. It remains, almost a quarter of a century later, Scotland's last win at a World Cup.

The 1990 team was not a vintage Brazil side – they only made it to the last 16 before Argentina sent them home – but the challenge facing Scotland was daunting. It was a 14-hour round trip by coach for us to reach Turin. The contrast with Genoa was stark: it rained, the place felt colourless, the Brazilian support was too self-absorbed. Only inside the vast old Juventus ground did the pulses start to quicken again. The Samba drums were constant but Scottish fans were noisier. Way down on the pitch, Brazil had Romario, Careca and Dunga. Scotland really needed at least a draw and were nine minutes from getting one. A display of real discipline and graft – it included Murdo MacLeod being poleaxed by a Branco free-kick – took them through 80 goalless minutes. Then Jim Leighton couldn't hold a long-range shot by Alemao and it spun from him towards Careca. He reacted before any defender and squirted the ball across the goal to the far post where Muller, a journeyman by Brazilian standards, poked it into the net. Leighton pounded the pitch in frustration. Everyone shared it.

In stoppage time, the ball broke to Johnston in the Brazilian six-yard box. A certain goal. Somehow his excellent finishing let him down for once, shooting too high and allowing Claudio Taffarel to make a remarkable touch over the bar. "It was probably the save of the tournament," said McCall.

Our coach left about an hour after the game, travelling all through the night to be back in Rimini for 8am. That's where later that day we sat in a bar to watch Uruguay beat South Korea with a stoppage-time goal. The significance? It meant Uruguay (described by the former SFA secretary Ernie Walker as "the scum of world football" only four years earlier) leapfrogged us and took the last of the qualification places available to teams who finished third. Finally, it really was all over.

Costa Rica, humiliation, anger, redemption, the assault on the senses of that unforgettable night against the Swedes, joy, Brazil, hard-luck stories and a reason to curse how close we came: Italia 90 was the Scottish World Cup that had it all. £305 well spent.