Hearts hero Craig Gordon shares his frustration as World Cup dream dies with Ukraine defeat

Craig Gordon expressed his frustration after again missing out on the World Cup following Scotland’s 3-1 defeat to Ukraine in the play-off semi-final.

The Hearts goalkeeper pulled off some his usual heroics early in the match but it ultimately wasn’t enough as Andriy Yarmolenko, Roman Yaremchuk and Artem Dovbyk netted for the visitors. Callum McGregor had pulled a goal back for Steve Clarke’s side at 2-0.

At 39 years of age, it remains to be seen whether this was Gordon’s last chance to reach a World Cup with the next tournament scheduled for 2026. The custodian, who earned his 67th cap, has yet to play at a major tournament in his international career.

"There’s a lot of disappointed guys in there. There’s not an awful lot that can be said at the moment,” he told Sky Sports.

A dejected Craig Gordon at full-time as Scotland lose to Ukraine in the World Cup play-off. Picture: SNS

“Most of the guys in there are probably young enough to go again. It’s never nice when it ends and it’s ended this way far too many times for me personally. We’ve got close on so many occasions and to come up short again this time.

“We didn’t play our best. We can’t hide behind that. We didn’t perform as we wanted to. We don’t want to make any excuses, it wasn’t a good performance, it wasn’t our best. We still created chances and could’ve got back into the game but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

“When you concede goals you always analyse them and figure out what we could’ve done better. We’ll do that but obviously it’s a tough one to take for the moment.”

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