HAD Scotland held on to beat
Argentina at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday, their roller-coaster World Cup would almost certainly have ended last night underneath the French Alps.
Germany would have been the last 16 opponents in Grenoble and, as their win over Nigeria demonstrated yesterday, they had VAR on their side. On top of their other advantages, the 2003 and 2007 winners had five days to recover from their previous game, whereas Scotland would have had less than three.
That, of course, is small consolation to all who had hoped to see Shelley Kerr and her players make history by becoming the first-ever Scottish side to reach the knock-out stages of a major championship. Instead, that familiar sinking feeling returned in extraordinary circumstances in Paris.
The reaction to the 3-3 draw against Argentina splits into two camps. The first is that the squad were grievously unlucky with refereeing and VAR decisions; the second that Scotland were architects of their own misfortunes and succumbed to the national trait of finding a way not to qualify for the final stages.
Most of those expressing the first sentiment have emotional attachments to the team; those taking the more critical view were largely watching the side play for the first time.
Having viewed the Argentina game again on Friday night, the Scotland performance for 74 minutes was even better than first gleaned. Our top performers are mostly in midfield and attack, so playing a high-tempo, high-pressing game suits them best.
Erin Cuthbert was outstanding, while the introduction of Leanne Crichton to give the midfield much needed backbone also worked well.
But, as everybody who watches the side regularly knows, the defence is often an error waiting to happen. When it went to 3-1 the energy seemed to drain out of the Scotland players and, if Kerr was culpable of one thing it was not introducing substitutes earlier than the very late double change which was to contributed so much to the agony.
Her opposite number, Carlos Borrello, took off his captain and best player, Estefania Banini – much to her disgust – on the hour and all three substitutes made a huge contribution to the comeback.
As ever, the truth lies somewhere
in the middle of the two polarised opinions. Scotland were unquestionably on the wrong side of major decisions – but there wasn’t too much sympathy for Nigeria when the technology gave Wendie Renard a second chance to make the score 1-0 for France two nights earlier.
Although losing what would have been a hard-earned point stopped the Nigerians breezing into the next round as a third place qualifier, they progressed because they won a group match – which Scotland failed to do.
Equally, Kerr’s side should never have lost the three late goals – despite having scored the same amount in similar circumstances twice against Poland in the qualifiers. But equally, it’s ignorant to portray it as a craven capitulation, especially as poor refereeing deprived the game of the added-on time required, by both teams, to find a winner.
The circumstances were even more controversial than those of October, 2012, when Scotland lost their Euro 2013 play-off to Spain. In contrast to Paris, the German referee, Bibiana Steinhaus, added on time which didn’t seem justified and the hosts scored at the death to qualify. Scotland were left claiming an injustice. Some things never change, but at least there is Euro 2021 qualifying ahead.
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