When news filtered through back home from Scotland’s World Cup training camp that Scott McTominay was suffering from a sickness bug, the Tartan Army thought the worst had happened. As it transpired, they didn’t know the half of it.
In actual fact, less than two days before Scotland’s opening game against Haiti, it had been discovered that the Napoli talisman was suffering from atrial fibrillation - in layman’s terms, an abnormal or irregular heart rhythm. An issue that would require a police escort to hospital in Boston, where a shock would be administered to his heart to get it back into its normal pattern.
There was nothing, though, not even a heart scare, that was going to keep him from playing. And he doesn’t now use that episode, and the physical effects of it so close to the biggest games of his life in the sweltering summer heat of Boston, as an excuse for failing to reach the levels both he and the Scotland support know all too well that he is capable of.
Still, what he would have given for a simple tummy bug.
“You're not going to say I have something to do with my heart two days before the first game of the World Cup,” McTominay said.
“It's not an ideal scenario being in the hospital two days before. Well, technically 36 hours before the first game of the World Cup. But you have to take the cards that you're dealt on the chin. It's part of the game.
“There's nothing I could do about it and the shock went well, I was back in normal rhythm, then 24 hours later you're playing a World Cup game. It's tough. It's never easy, things like that, but you can't use things like that as an excuse because that's just not in my nature.
“I take whole responsibility for a lot of the things that we didn't create or didn't score the goals in the World Cup. I can put my face out there and say that that was nowhere near good enough. But that's part of football. You have to get away and think about it and reflect and come back a better player.
“Atrial fibrillation is a fairly normal routine thing for people in general. They might not know that they have it. But when you're an elite athlete in general across the board, across football, across sports in general, you know if you've got something that's different.
“Whenever you're running and you check your pulse and it's got a slight irregular beat there, it feels like your heart's coming out of your chest. Not obviously as bad as that but that's the sensation that you have that it's pumping, but not a regular heartbeat that's like bum, bum, bum, bum. Mine's going bum, bu-bu-bum, bum, bu-bu-bum. So, you know the difference.
“We went to Boston, we got a police escort to go and get the shock then that was it to be honest. After that, I was back in normal rhythm, which is how a healthy heart should be, then I went and played the game two days later.
“I put it to bed. I tried my best to put it to bed anyway. Whenever you go under anaesthetic and you have to get put to sleep, it decreases the athletic performance a little bit and sleep and stuff like that. You have to get back round to doing it again.
“It was far from ideal but those are the cards that you're dealt, there's nothing you can do about it.”
As important as the World Cup was to his nation and to himself personally, though, was there not a part of him that felt his health had to take precedence? If his family had designs on talking him out of playing, they had little chance of doing so.
“No, I wouldn’t have listened to it,” he said.
“All my family and friends had just flown 10 hours for the first game of the World Cup! I didn’t sit there thinking I might not play. That would never be the case.
“I was always going to play in that game. Maybe selfishly, I don’t know, but that’s football.
“Players play with injuries all the time when they’re not quite right and it might be to the detriment of the team. I was fully functional.
“It was in my hands. The medical team reassured me it was safe to play and they said: ‘What do you think’? I said, ‘let’s go for it’.”
That is not to say that McTominay doesn’t have regrets about the way the World Cup panned out both collectively for Scotland and personally for himself, even if he isn’t looking for excuses.
No one needs to tell the 29-year-old how disappointing the outcome was on the field, for the third tournament in a row. He admits that a period of soul searching ensued.
“It wasn’t easy after the World Cup,” he said.
“It was probably two, three weeks of putting my head in the sand, thinking we let one slip. That was just the bottom line. It took me longer than what I normally would do to get over disappointment in football, to know the reason why I felt like it was just because we could have done more. But in general, it was probably one of the worst moments of my career.
“I feel like I wouldn't mind if we’d come away from it and we’d given a better account of ourselves, put it that way. That was the most important message I took away from it is we had to do a bit more than what we did and that's part of the game.
“That can happen. You're coming up against world-class opposition, and you know we're capable of playing in these games - in the Champions League, Europa League, and the respective leagues that all the lads are playing in. So, it's not totally foreign to us, but that's why you want to go to the next tournament.
“I didn’t know that’s what people were saying [that I didn’t play at my best level]. I probably had an idea. I’ve been criticised a million times before in my career before, but I don’t let it get under my skin or worry too much about it.
“You know yourself as a professional footballer if you’re not quite where you should be.
“For me, I had half an idea, but you just try to block it out because if you think about negative things, you might speak it into existence.”
Perhaps that is partly why McTominay is so positive about the arrival of new national team head coach, Sebastien Pocognoli.
Having had his time to reflect on the past as he convalesced following the surgery that was eventually required to fully remedy his heart issue, he is now focused on the future, and firmly believes that Scotland can enjoy success under their Belgian manager after something of a rocky start.
“I like it, I like his ideas a lot,” he said.
“Whenever I first had a meeting with him, I liked the way that he wants to play the game. High energy, high tempo, and obviously different ideas tactically on how to build up and the high-pressure situations we we’ll find ourselves in going against teams and trying to nick it off them and create goals that way, which is another tool in how to score goals and put the ball in the back of the opposition’s net.
“So yeah, the early signs are really good, and he’s a great guy as well, as are his staff.
“So, I’m looking forward to it. I feel like I’m a young kid that is coming back to learn as much as possible, and to try and soak it all in and help the younger ones realise the opportunity that they have in Scotland and in football in general.
“They don’t maybe realise how far they can push themselves to break boundaries and limits in the game, and that can really pay off.
“I see a role for all the players, not just myself to be honest. You have to envision it for yourself, how the game might look and all of that, but I feel like for all the young players, if you are a young player coming into this Scotland team it is such an exciting time to be here.
“Because he will play you, and he will make sure that if the others aren’t doing it, then the other ones will get a chance.
“I think that’s so important, and to push the other players around you as well. I think it’s an exciting chapter.”
A new era, then, for Scotland, but one which the old McTominay will soon be solidly, and regularly, at the heart of.
“I’ve had a good time to reflect on the World Cup and think about things leading up to it,” he said.
“When I had the operation, I had three weeks at home. So, I had three weeks of resting my mind more than anything to try and come back in a better state.
“I went into that surgery with no doubt in my mind that I’d be back. I lost a little bit of muscle when I came out, three or four kilos which wasn’t ideal. I had to put that back on pretty sharpish.
“The first picture of me when I came back, I looked quite gaunt. So, I had to get that muscle back so I could get back my powerful running and what I normally do on a football pitch.
“It was a good reset period for me. No matter how long it took - even it took until I was 40 - I was coming back to try and do my best.
“I’m feeling good. I’m feeling better every game, step by step, and I think I’ve played seven on the bounce, so it is positive signs.
“It’s obviously going to take a bit of time to get back to my best, but hopefully that will be soon.”
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