Pages

Friday 18 October 2013

Scotland end on a high

Scotland 2-0 Croatia

Hampden Park, Attendance 45000
2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers - UEFA Pool A

Scotland waiting for their first home competitive win in over two years faced a Croatia side looking to secure a play-off spot. Croatia started the match the better side but few chances were created. The first proper chance of the match came in the 28th minute with Celtic defender Charlie Mulgrew crossing the ball from the North End onto Robert Snodgrass's head who put it past Pletikosa to give Scotland the lead. Scotland started to play some "straight from the Training ground" football as Anya, Mulgrew and Snodgrass playing one touch passes and unlocking Croatia's defence. Scotland almost scored again with a Bannan free kick, but during the half time interval Croatia found out that they had secured a play-off place with them being secured as at least being the 8th best second place team. The game was not as exciting as it was in the first half, but a needless foul on Ikechi Anya gave Scotland a penalty 18 minutes from time. Barry Bannan took the penalty but was the keeper got his gloves to it and pushed it wide for it to go to Naismith who put the ball in to make it 2-0. Scotland saw out the game and despite Jelavic coming on kept a clean sheet. 
MoTM: Robert Snodgrass

Scotland have moved up in the World Rankings from 63rd to 35th with their win at Hampden on Tuesday night. On another point, the Scots have secured a place in pot 4 for the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying which is important as this will be Scotland's best chance to end what will be an 18 year drought of major tournament football, as their are 23 places (as France have already qualified as hosts) available at the championships in 2016. Also, Gibraltar will be competeting for the first time as they are now members of UEFA.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Solid result from Scotland