Rod Stewart must be in party mood: Scotland qualifies for the 2026 World Cup

The whole of Scotland is in a state of emergency! The Scottish national football team has qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1998 with a 4-2 (1-0) win over Denmark.

In front of 51,866 spectators at a sold-out Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scott McTominay with an incredible overhead kick (4th minute) , Lawrence Shankland (78th minute), Kierab Tierney (90+3) and Kenny McLean (90+8) secured Scotland's ticket to the 2026 finals, which will be held from 11 June to 19 July 2026 in the USA, Canada and Mexico. The Danes, who had to play with ten men for a good half hour after Frankfurt's Rasmus Kristensen was sent off with a red card (62'), came back twice through a penalty converted by Rasmus Hojlund (57') and Patrick Dorgu of Manchester United (82'), before Celtic's Tierney sent Hampden Park into raptures with a dream goal. The icing on the cake was Shankland's goal in the last minute of stoppage time, when he fired the ball over Danish keeper Kasper Schmeichel from 50 metres to make it 4-2.

In their last World Cup appearance 27 years ago, Scotland lost 2-1 to defending champions Brazil, managed only a 1-1 draw against Norway and lost 3-0 to Morocco in their final group match, thus finishing bottom of their group.
Now, the men led by coach Steve Clark, who has been in charge since 2019, want to do better next year and improve the Tartan Army's rather poor World Cup record. Of 23 World Cup matches to date, only four have been won, seven ended in draws and twelve were lost.

Their most frequent opponents in a World Cup final tournament to date have been Brazil (four times) and Uruguay (twice). Whether Clark's protégés will face these opponents again will be decided on 5 December, when the groups for the 23rd FIFA World Cup will be drawn at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC.