How the Covid lockdown may be making the Scotland football team great again – Vladimir McTavish

If you had asked me at the start of this year which issues concerned me the most, I would have answered, not necessarily in this order, the following: Brexit, climate change, Boris Johnson winning a huge majority, Trump in the White House and the state of the Scotland football team.

Ryan Fraser turns to celebrate in front of an empty stand after he scores for Scotland against the Czech Republic at Hampden (Picture: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

Then along came a global pandemic, and a worldwide shortage of toilet paper to put everything into perspective.

We are so focussed on the one crisis facing humanity that we are in danger of forgetting what a parlous state the world was in before coronavirus struck.

But in the case of some of those huge problems facing the planet, we may be beginning to see some glimmers of light at the end of this year-long dark tunnel.

Brexit is still a problem. In fact, it is an even bigger problem than 12 months ago. Johnson seems to be taking the attitude that if he ignores the EU, it will go away.

As we all remember, he took a similar approach to Covid in March, and we now all know how successful that turned out to be.

At least, the fight against climate change has been partly aided by a drop in foreign travel and a temporary fall in road traffic, and it would appear that even Trump’s stunt of pretending to have the virus (seriously, how many morbidly-obese 74-year-olds recover after two days?) will not save him from the wrath of the American voters next month.

Last of all, the Scotland football team have been going about their jobs quietly, and now stand one game away from their first major tournament since 1998. Not only that, they have done so without any fans to cheers them on.

It did strike me that this could be the very reason the team are doing so well. Maybe us loyal foot-soldiers of the Tartan Army aren’t such a valuable 12th man and have been holding them back all these years. maybe they should carry on playing behind closed doors. I hope not. If we do qualify for next year’s Euros, I’d bite your hand off for a ticket to one of the games at Hampden.

Isn’t it great to finally have something to look forward to?

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