There are 338 Scottish players that have never lost a Scotland match in which they scored. Impressive, but 185 of them only scored once for Scotland, so we’ll ignore them. Sorry, lads.

That leaves 153 players who scored at least two goals for Scotland and avoided defeat every time they did so. Still too many.

Only 46 men have scored five or more goals for Scotland without losing any of those games. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Six Is The Magic Number

Exactly 25 players have scored six or more goals for Scotland without ever losing a match in which they scored.

So apologies to Charlie Nicholas, Darren Fletcher, Gary McAllister, Stuart Armstrong, Sir Alex Ferguson, Darren Jackson, Leigh Griffiths, Scott Brown and hundreds of others, but your unbeaten scoring run for Scotland isn’t making the cut.

The good news is that three of the 25 are in the Scotland World Cup squad, including numbers one and two on the all-time list.

The 25 Scotland men who have scored at least six times for Scotland, and never lost a match in which they scored, are:

Read more

This article has the answers to a quiz question I posted on social media earlier today. I was writing an article on the clubs that have only ever provided one player to the Scotland national team, and decided to pose the question online first. Perfect quiz question material, or so I thought.

Perfect quiz question material - or so I thought.

Most of the wrong answers were probably my fault, as the wording in my post admittedly wasn’t clear. The question I meant to ask was:

there are nearly 70 clubs that have only ever provided one player to the national team; name the 29 clubs to join that list since France ‘98.

I ended up trying and failing to explain, on four different social media platforms, why Che Adams at Torino doesn’t count as an answer, because Denis Law played for Torino in 1961.

Anyway. The answers are here, along with the number of players every club has provided to the national team, and the total number of caps awarded to players of each club.

One Scotland Player Clubs

If you ask it correctly, this could be a good question to pass the time when travelling to America. Take turns naming clubs that have provided players to the Scotland national team. Amazingly, there are 174 correct answers.

Of those 174 clubs, 69 have provided exactly one player, while the other 105 have provided two or more. Guessing the 69 clubs that have only ever provided one player becomes very difficult, very quickly.

Only 105 of those have provided more than 2 players, so guessing these 69 clubs that have only ever provided one player starts to become very difficult, very quickly.

The quiz question answers for the one-club-players since 1998 are the first 29 clubs in this graphic down until O’Neill with Wolfsburg 1998.

Scotland Players By Club

Across those 174 clubs, there are 1,710 club/player combinations, involving the 1,244 men that have played for Scotland. The 69 clubs above have provided exactly one player, with the remaining 105 clubs providing two or more.

This next list shows the 41 clubs to provide 12 or more players, purely because the graphic would get too big if I went down to the next 64 clubs, who have provided 11 or fewer.

The top three English clubs may surprise you!

Read more

Tonight’s match and that Euro 2024 qualifier in Cyprus are the only two occasions Scotland have done this outside Scotland since 1950. Soon after finding the answer to how often Scotland have raced into a 3-0 lead in the first half hour - 23 times - my spreadsheets were open again, as Scotland made it four on the stroke of half-time.

That was the first time Scotland had raced into a 4-0 first-half lead since a 6-0 win against the Faroe Islands at Celtic Park in 2006. Tonight’s co-commentator, James McFadden, scored in that match, as did studio guest Kenny Miller. Tyler Fletcher came on for the last 10 minutes tonight, and his dad Darren was also among the goals 20 years ago.

A 4-1 win over Trinidad & Tobago in 2004 was the only other such occurrence this century. Across Scotland’s 853 matches, they have been 4-0 up in the first half on only 19 occasions.

Subscribe now

We can’t get carried away, though. Bolivia may have beaten Brazil and Colombia in World Cup qualifying, but those wins can largely be attributed to the high altitude of their home stadium. They traditionally play in La Paz, already around 3,600 metres above sea level, and in the 2026 qualifiers they moved some matches to El Alto, around 4,150 metres. The opposition have to deal with thinner air and faster fatigue, and Bolivia have been able to capitalise on that advantage for years. But their away form ensured that they are not going to the World Cup.

Bolivia finished seventh in qualifying, and a fair assessment may be that the South American side were distinctly average tonight: ranked 77th in the FIFA world rankings and playing in an end-of-season friendly. But Haiti are ranked 82nd in the same rankings, so tonight may have been a useful exercise in showing what Scotland can do when they play attacking football with two strikers.

This is, of course, an oversimplification, but Scotland have played two strikers in both friendly matches this week, and in both games they have scored four times. Back-to-back 4+ goal games have happened only 18 times in Scotland’s history, and this week was the first time for nearly 100 years.

If Scotland can make it three consecutive games of scoring four goals next week against Haiti, for what would be just the fifth time in their history - and the first time since 1929 - then a World Cup knockout tie will be all but secured. Hwfg.

First, though, it’s Curaçao at Hampden with a 1pm kick-off, which is also live on BBC. It’s Scotland’s 852nd match in which the SFA counts caps for the players, and our 246th friendly. We are on a horrendous decade-long run without a win in home friendlies, which will hopefully surely end tomorrow afternoon.

Especially given this match is against Curaçao, who are ranked 82nd in the FIFA World Rankings, one place above Haiti, who are 83rd. The result of this ultimately meaningless friendly will no doubt make or break many Scotland fans’ confidence heading into that opening match at the World Cup in two weeks.

This article will look at Scotland’s friendly record, but also Scotland’s record against ‘diddies’. Being a Scotland fan means it’s acceptable to refer to other nations as diddies, and for the purposes of this article we’ll treat Curaçao’s ranking of 82nd in the FIFA World Rankings as “the diddy line”.

Overall Friendly Record

Since the official birth of international ‘foot-ball’ in November 1872, Scotland have played 245 friendlies, winning 105, drawing 49 and losing 91, for an overall friendly win percentage of 43%.

At home, the 1-0 loss at Hampden against Japan gives us a friendly record of played 110, with 51 wins, 21 draws and 38 losses, for a home friendly win percentage of 46%.

Despite winning nearly half of our home friendlies in our history, Scotland are currently on an eleven-match winless streak at home. The streak officially passed the ten-year mark after we lost to Japan at the end of March.

Stat: Scotland have never won a home friendly match in which they’ve been losing at half-time.

While 11 matches is Scotland’s longest winless run in home friendlies in terms of matches, it’s technically not the longest streak in terms of years; the longest gap between home friendly wins is actually 54 years.

After beating Wales 5-0 at Crosshill, the first Hampden Park, on 25th March 1882, Scotland wouldn’t win another home friendly until beating Germany 2-0 at Hampden on 14th October 1936.

The obvious caveat to that winless ‘run’ is that it only contains one home friendly without a win: a 2-2 draw Vs Austria. All other Scotland matches played in that half-century were either British Home Championship matches or away friendlies. So we won’t really count that as a winless run.

Steve Clarke this week signed a four year contract extension to see him through Euro 2028 and World Cup 2030, having come through a horrific slump in form before recovering to reach a third tournament from four attempts. After being on a run of just 1 win in 16 matches, including 10 losses, Scotland then won eight of their next 12 matches to reach the World Cup in dramatic fashion at home to Denmark.

Read more

The Connections

Despite having only two current players in the squad, Celtic are the club with the most connections to the national team, with six of the 26 having made a senior appearance for the club. Current Scotland squad members Anthony Ralston and Kieran Tierney are joined by four former Celts, including Ben Gannon-Doak, who made a couple of senior appearances before moving to Liverpool.

Rangers are joint-second for connections: Liam Kelly, John Souttar and Findlay Curtis are joined by former right-back Nathan Patterson. I’ve also included Lawrence Shankland, as he has now signed for Rangers, although he won’t make his senior debut for the club until the new season.

Like Rangers, Aberdeen have five squad connections, with Scott McKenna and Lewis Ferguson two that have earnt the Dons decent profits since leaving in recent years.

The Players

Read more

Article update 14:15 on 24/05/26 after an SPFL club got in touch.
Update is highlighted within article.

Rangers are reportedly close to agreeing a deal to sign Hearts Captain Lawrence Shankland this week, before Scotland fly out to the World Cup. The rumours state that Shankland has a 1-year break clause in his 3 year deal at Tynecastle, which allows him to leave this summer on a free transfer.

If this deal does happen, then the date on which any new contract at Rangers starts could be financially key, for both clubs. This article will explain how the club benefits programmes work, with recent examples, and why the start date of any new Shankland contract would matter.

UEFA Example

As explained in previous articles on this website, such as the financial analysis of Motherwell’s annual report, football’s governing bodies financially compensates clubs for making their players available for international football, including the World Cup.

This is referred to by both UEFA and FIFA as their ‘club benefits programme’.
It is sometimes referred to as a ‘solidarity fund’, but it is totally separate to UEFA’s solidarity payments - which have nothing to do with international football. Those solidarity payments are distributed to all clubs in the Premiership that don’t play in a league phase.

Last year, UEFA revealed the details of their club benefits programme for the latest 4-year cycle, which detailed that around €2.7m flowed to Scottish players for payments covering two Nations League campaigns, all European Qualifiers and Euro 2024. Celtic were the main beneficiaries of this, due to the number of players they had representing Scotland in that period.

Prior to Motherwell - or any of the clubs - releasing their annual accounts, I was able to estimate the payment each club would receive from UEFA after Euro 2024. As part of this, I calculated a payment of €174k to Motherwell, thanks to Liam Kelly signing a short-term contract before re-joining Rangers, to ensure Motherwell would receive the UEFA compensation.

However, when a player, or a player’s agent, negotiates a deal like this, it is highly likely that the contract would involve a decent percentage of the UEFA payment flowing directly to the player and their representatives.

The various bodies that represent European football clubs have made steady progress in their lobbying of the governing bodies to increase all solidarity funds that are shared with the clubs. We’ve seen record levels of UEFA solidarity payments (to all clubs in the Premiership that don’t participate in a league phase), while the “UEFA club benefits programme” for releasing players to the national teams have increased over time too.

Now a look at the FIFA equivalent, before we look at the specifics of the Shankland transfer and the payments all relevant Scottish clubs can expect to receive this summer.

FIFA Club Benefits Programme

FIFA confirmed last year that the 2026 World Cup will see a record $355 million distributed to clubs, which is a near 70% increase from the previous World Cup. The programme follows UEFA’s lead in that it now also compensates clubs for players released in qualifiers, when previously it was only the World Cup tournament itself.

Like the UEFA equivalent, the FIFA programme has grown over the last 10-15 years, meaning more money filtering down to the clubs that actually hold the contracts that pay the national team players.

This is great news for clubs of players who don’t make the final World Cup squad after appearing in qualifiers. When the programme previously was only shared with the clubs who released players for the final squad, you could have a player involved in every qualifier before getting injured and missing the tournament - and the club received nothing.

Read more

Article edited at 4pm on 21/05 to update club graphics gallery.

On Tuesday, Steve Clarke revealed his 26-man Scotland squad for the 2026 World Cup. It was largely as expected, with the injury to Tommy Conway making room for one of Scotland’s in-form strikers, Ross Stewart.

Lennon Miller can feel unfortunate to miss out, especially given Scotland have taken what is arguably an unnecessary three right-backs. It’s great to see another teenager, Findlay Curtis, making the squad after a stellar few months at Kilmarnock. He may prove to be a vital outlet as a late substitute, given the lack of width in the squad.

I had a brief chat with Andy and Calum on the Hampden Roar podcast half an hour after the squad was announced. It is available wherever you get your podcasts.

While only 15 of this 26-man squad were in Germany for the last tournament, Gannon-Doak, Stewart, Hirst and Curtis are the only real new players. Gordon, Souttar, Patterson, Hickey, Hyam, Ferguson and Dykes are the other seven who made this squad but did not make the Euro 2024 squad, primarily due to injury.

Now, a look at the Scottish World Cup squads throughout history, covering

• Clubs supplying the most Scotland World Cup players

• Leagues supplying the most Scotland World Cup players

• Scotland World Cup squad members playing abroad

• World Cup squad members from other nations playing in Scotland

Clubs Supplying Scotland

This will be Scotland’s ninth FIFA World Cup squad, and the first in 28 years. Across those nine tournaments, there have been 202 Scotland World Cup squad selections, made up of 165 different players.

That total includes thirty Scotsmen who have been named in more than one World Cup squad. Only one of those 30 made four Scotland World Cup squads, while five players made three squads. The remaining 24 made exactly two Scotland World Cup squads.

For this article, I’ve teamed up with ‘Boot & Ball’ to promote their Scotland national team playing cards.

They would make a great Father’s Day gift, which is exactly only one month away.

Click here to order!

Read more

However there were still reports of a few hundred tickets available for both Scotland Vs Haiti and Scotland Vs Morocco. These sold out within a couple of hours, by the lucky few that weren’t directed to the wrong queue by FIFA!

Yes, FIFA kindly emailed people to inform them of yesterday’s sale, but included a link that defaulted to the PMA (participating members association) sales queue. Similarly, if you loaded the FIFA tickets website, lots of people were automatically forced into a queue, which was again for the PMA tickets; but the user wasn’t to know this. After hours of waiting, fans were then asked for their PMA code, which would be for the fans of those teams that qualified this week (Bosnia, Czechia, Sweden and Turkey). The Scottish PMA sale was conducted through the SSC some months ago, with 3,889 tickets for the games in Boston, and 3,736 tickets for the game in Miami Vs Brazil. There were nearly 10,000 SSC applications for each game and so thousands are left trying to obtain tickets through other means.

Those that were lucky enough to get tickets yesterday, seem to be anyone that was able to login and specifically choose the “last-minute sales” queue, while being patient enough to wait for up to three hours to get access to the website.

FIFA also introduced “dynamic pricing” at this stage, because of course they did. Despite the widespread criticism they’ve faced worldwide on pricing already, they still increased the face value of sought after matches by over 10%. This included Scotland games, and so the $600 tickets were now $665. Shameless.

As FIFA finalises hospitality sales, final stadium configuration and segregation, there may be further ad-hoc tickets released and added to the website between now and the day of the game. There is no way to set an alert for this, and so anyone who is able to buy face-value tickets from FIFA between now and the tournament will do so by pure chance.

The resale portal also re-opens today, as it has been shut since February. This is where you can buy tickets from other fans, who are looking to sell unwanted tickets, through FIFA’s official site, with an unlimited price ceiling. They can charge anything they want, with 15% going to FIFA. A further 15% is then taken from the buyer, too.

As it’s been shut for a couple months, lots more tickets might enter the resale portal today and over the coming months, which through supply and demand may bring the prices back down towards face value, the closer we get to the tournament. However, due to the 30% FIFA levy, even if the prices drop, obtaining a ticket through the resale portal at face value will still be difficult - as that would mean the seller will be making a loss.

Lastly, those with existing tickets are now able to login to their FIFA ticketing account and see their exact seat numbers. Roshan, one of the subscribers on this website, has used the group chat to provide links for you to access an interactive view from your seat. The links are include below, alongside the stadium layout where I’ve highlighted the official Scotland SSC sections with a salmon pink coloured circle. The article ends with a clip of me on BBC radio this morning chatting to Phil Goodlad who is now a good friend of mine due to how often we have spoke over the last few years!

If you are not already in the group chat, you can join it via this link. It’s only for paying subscribers, and there’s already been some face value ticket sales between members in there. Members are also quick to help each other by posting links when tickets become available or when the price drops on the resale portal. Any paying subscriber can create a thread, and can reply to existing threads. The substack layout can be confusing, so just check you have hit reply within the existing thread, otherwise your reply will start a whole new thread, within the overall group chat, and won’t be seen by the person you’re replying to.

BOSTON

Read more

With the Stats Packs, I’ll aim to cover all four SPFL divisions, all Scotland national team matches, and all Scottish teams in European football. There will be at least 3-5 stats per match.

The first Stats Pack will be an extended one, for tonight’s Scotland match against Ivory Coast. This one is free for all subscribers, but going forward the stats packs will join everything else on the website, in being only for paying subscribers. Thank you

IVORY COAST VS SCOTLAND: Hill Dickinson Stadium - Tuesday 7:30pm, live on BBC Scotland

THE VENUE - LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND

• Scotland are playing in Liverpool for the first time since a 2-0 World Cup qualifying win over Wales in October 1977 at Anfield. Their only other men’s internationals in the city were against England in 1895 and 1911.

• This will be Scotland’s first men’s match in England since the 0-0 Euro 2021 draw with England at Wembley on 18th June 2021.

• Scotland have won only 2 of their last 10 matches in England; and none this century. We beat Switzerland 1-0 at Villa Park in Euro ‘96 and England 1-0 at the Old Wembley in the Euro 2000 playoff in November 1999.

SCOTLAND

• This is Scotland’s first senior men’s match against Ivory Coast. “The Elephants” will be the 85th different national team Scotland have faced and the sixth from Africa.

• Scotland’s overall record against African nations is W2 D1 L4, with seven goals scored and 12 conceded. Their last such match was a 2-2 friendly draw with Nigeria in London in May 2014.

• Scotland are facing back-to-back non-European opponents for the first time since friendly losses against Peru (0-2) and Mexico (0-1) in May and June 2018.

• Charlie Mulgrew is the last Scotland player to score against African opposition, netting after 10 minutes against Nigeria in 2014 (our 2nd goal was an own goal).

• Scotland’s last winning goal against African opposition was Kris Boyd’s 71st-minute strike against South Africa in August 2007.

• Scotland have won only 2 of their last 12 friendlies overall, drawing 3 and losing 7. Their only victories in that run were against Gibraltar and Liechtenstein.

• Che Adams is Scotland’s most recent friendly scorer, having hit a hat-trick against Liechtenstein in June 2025.

THE OPPOSITION

• Ivory Coast qualified for the 2026 World Cup by going unbeaten through all 10 qualifiers, conceding zero goals.

• They were knocked out of AFCON 2025 in the Quarter-Final by Egypt (3-2), with Mo Salah scoring the winner.

• Ivory Coast have only lost 2 of their last 13 matches. They kept nine clean sheets in those 13 games, winning 8 of them.

• Key players include Amad Diallo (Man United), Franck Kessié (Al-Ahli) Ibrahim Sangaré (Nottingham Forest), Simon Adingra (Monaco), and Evann Guessand (Crystal Palace).

IF THIS HAPPENS, THEN…

• If Ivory Coast score, it will be the 100th goal conceded under Steve Clarke’s Scotland (scored 108).

• If Scotland do not score, it will be the first time they have failed to score in consecutive matches since March 2024, when they lost 0-4 to the Netherlands and 0-1 to Northern Ireland.

• If captain Andy Robertson plays, he would win his 92nd cap for Scotland, moving him into outright second for the most in men’s national team’s history (overtaking Jim Leighton on 91). Only Kenny Dalglish (102) has played more often.

• Read more about the records available to Robertson in the below article:

Share

Further reading on caps, win records and 20-year old jerseys:

Robertson currently sits joint second, tied on 91 caps with Scotland’s oldest ever player at a World Cup - Jim Leighton. As an aside, I still like to think of myself as being somewhat ‘young’. I was ten years old at France ‘98, asking my dad “what’s on the Scotland goalies forehead?”, referring to Jim Leighton’s Vaseline smeared brow. However, I was made to feel old at my work this week, when browsing ’s World Cup souvenir magazine. While reading through Daniel Gray’s brilliant depiction of a documentary from France ‘98, I remarked to colleagues that I can’t believe Jim Leighton wore the same under top to games for over 20 years! A much younger colleague replied, “who is Jim Leighton?.”

Naturally, to fully encapsulate Jim Leighton at a World Cup, I had to google ‘Jim Leighton vaseline eyes’, and the results made my younger colleague’s head explode, as he asked me “what’s that on his forehead?!”

Anyway, Robbo has just turned 32 and so probably still has a few more years left in a Scotland jersey. Although maybe not as many years as Leighton’s bogging under-jersey lasted. In the next year, Andy Robertson should become Scotland’s most capped male player ever, and is likely to be the first of a few players to break King Kenny Dalglish’s 102 cap record in the coming years. For example, John McGinn, who is six months younger than Robbo, is on 84 and should pass Kenny by Euro 2028.

If Robertson appears in every Scotland match this year, he will become Scotland’s most capped male player by the end of 2026 - even if we are eliminated in the World Cup group stages.

Including tomorrow’s match against Ivory Coast, there are at least 12 Scotland matches remaining this year; a further two pre-World Cup friendlies, at least 3 matches at the tournament, and then six fixtures in the Nations League in autumn.

Robertson’s record breaking appearance could come in the final UEFA Nations League match away to Switzerland in November. If we progress at the World Cup and play four or five matches, then he’d receive the honour in front of a sold-out Hampden park against either Slovenia or North Macedonia. Barring injury, McGinn will go 3rd in the list ahead of Leighton this year, too

THE RECORD AVAILABLE IN JUNE

As well as standing alone as the second most capped man in the national team’s history, Robertson could claim another record this summer

Read more

Our last friendly was a successful 4-0 drubbing of Liechtenstein last June, in which Che Adams scored the first hat-trick by a Scotland player in a friendly for the men’s national team in nearly 60 years.

It was the 10th Scotland men’s hat-trick in all competitions in just over ten years; after we had gone 46 years without one! You can revisit an article from last year to read more detail about hat-tricks involving the Scotland national team, including the eight men to have scored three in a match against Scotland.

Fuck you, Robert Earnshaw.

Today’s article will instead look at Scotland’s friendly record, as Steve Clarke’s men look to end a 10-year winless streak in home friendlies.

OVERALL FRIENDLY RECORD

Read more

Given there are so many of these scam websites out there, it is likely that at least one person reading this may inadvertently come across one and could be scammed out of their money.

This nearly happened today.

One of the subscribers on this website messaged me earlier today, saying he had found a website offering Scotland tickets at a fantastic price. Before he purchased, he wanted me to check the website out for him, just to be sure, as it seemed too good to be true. To make things worse, he found this website via a search on ChatGPT! The query was for the AI robot to recommend the best way to buy Scotland Vs Brazil tickets for the 2026 World Cup. ChatGPT recommended and linked him directly to this scam website (fifa.bio)!

I will be honest, when glancing at the scam website on my phone, I did not give him an instant answer. It looked incredibly similar to the real FIFA website. Same font, same layout. Same tickets. It looked like what it claimed to be - an affiliate FIFA site licensed to sell hospitality tickets. When logging on to a computer to check, there were some more obvious giveaways to show it was a scam, which I will get on to shortly. But first, have a look at some screenshots from the website. They are more sophisticated than they used to be.

The main clue was the prices. Hospitality for Scotland Vs Brazil was selling for less than $400. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably almost definitely is. However, if the prices were more realistic there are some other things you should look out for.

SIGNS THAT IT’S A SCAM

I would recommend loading the website on to a computer, so you can see it in full. Some of these websites will be more sophisticated than others, and you may have to look harder to find the proof. Don’t rush in to buying tickets, just because the price is “good”.

The signs it was a scam I found, included:

1. Imperfect AI generated popups - “2026TOfficial Hospitality”….. “food &drinklounge”

   

2. Login page can be bypassed by entering in any random characters as the email and password. Also no “sign in via google” option that most websites offer.

   

3. If it has an AI chatbot, ask it questions that should result in official answers. I asked for a FIFA email address and it replied with a random gmail.com account.

   

4. Click around the website to see where the links take you. “Contact us” page loaded a random whatsapp contact page.

   

5. Links to the official FIFA site just link back to the scam site

   

It’s unlikely anyone will come across or fall for these type of sites, but I thought it prudent to send out a warning email, just in case! If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

FIFA does not guarantee that the linking of applications through the “sit together” function will result in tickets next to each other in the stadium. However this will only be in rare cases - the final few seats in the section or when extremely large numbers of tickets have been linked together.

The deadline to link ticket applications together is 4pm on Sunday 22nd February, UK time.

This explainer article follows on from the previous video article which demonstrated how to transfer a ticket. This article will show screenshots explaining:

1. how to transfer a ticket

2. how to accept an incoming transfer

3. how to complete the sit together process

4. how to check your tickets have been linked

WHERE TO FIND WHAT YOU NEED

FIFA’s website has struggled to update in recent days, and so not all accounts have been updated at the same time. It’s worth stating that not all SSC tickets are visible in the account, and therefore not all SSC tickets can be transferred or “sat together” today, however there is still 12 days until the deadline so if you cannot see this yet, do not panic.

There are two distinct functions explained here; “ticket transfer” and “sit together”. These are both on separate parts of FIFA’s website. I have included screenshots to point you in the right direction, but if you have any questions, ask them in the most recent chat relating to this article in the group chat we have on substack.

TICKET TRANSFER

Read more

The draw for the 2026/27 UEFA Nations League (UNL) takes place this Thursday 12th February at 5pm. This article will discuss Scotland’s history against the possible opponents, what’s at stake in this UNL and the prizemoney on offer from UEFA - including UEFA’s club benefits programme.. The article ends by explaining the impact UNL has on Euro 2028 before revisiting Scotland’s nations league campaigns since the competition’s inception.

SCOTLAND’S LEAGUE & POT

Following our relegation from League A after losing the playoff last March (3-1 on aggregate to Greece), we have dropped to League B as a pot 1 team.

Read more

After stating that fans would start receiving emails “from no earlier than the 5th February”, most people hoped and expected that the status of their application would be known on Thursday. However, this was not to be and the slow release of emails by FIFA over the last few days has resulted in ticketless fans clinging on to faint hope that they may still be successful, convincing themselves that they just haven’t been told yet.

However it appears that most, if not all, of the successful applicants have now been able to discover their application status. This has been either through a link to view purchase history, an email directly from FIFA or through an update on the website, where application status’ has changed to “lost”, “successful” or “partially successful”.

Those that were successful will breathe a huge sigh of relief, even the ones that knew they were ‘guaranteed’ a ticket due to their SSC points total. For them, they can start planning the details of their trip to the USA, but for everyone else, it’s a question of - what next for tickets?

This short article explains what happened with the SFA allocation and lays out the next available options for fans to acquire World Cup tickets.

WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE SFA ALLOCATION?

For those on 12 points that may feel aggrieved that they were not successful in the ballot, it is worth remembering that the allocation given to SSC members (less than 4,000 tickets per match) meant that if everyone with 15+ points applied, then 15 points would have been the required threshold to guarantee a ticket.

Of course, not everyone applied and so the threshold dropped down to 12 points - which was an unexpected but welcome boost for many. In the final SFA guidance released following application data being sent by FIFA, it looked like 12 points would guarantee a ticket Vs Brazil, with those on 11 points entering a ballot for remaining tickets. At that point, there were more applicants for the Haiti and Morocco games and so it meant 13 points was the threshold to guarantee a ticket for the first two matches, with a random ballot for those on 12 points with a chance of receiving one of the remaining tickets.

However when FIFA ran the Scottish application data for the second and final time, the SFA revealed there were still nearly 1,000 people that had registered for “easy access” tickets; reserved for those with accessibility issues. That number far exceeded the number of supporters that have registered with the SFA as having such accessibility needs and so it was clear hundreds of people had made an error. What made this worse was the accessibility + wheelchair allocation was pitiful (only 6 wheelchair tickets per match!) and so the majority of those applications were doomed to fail.

The SFA sent out several emails asking those that had applied for the wrong category to cancel their application and start again. As a result, several hundred people did exactly this, and by changing their application this:

Read more

Over the next few days there will also be articles released on the website analysing the report into the economic value of Scottish football, a roundup of the UEFA coefficient - with a specific look at Rangers - as well as a comprehensive breakdown of Kilmarnock’s annual report.

Read more

This update will be shorter, containing only the key points: the new points thresholds, and the fact that nearly 1,000 people are still at risk of having their ticket applications cancelled. More detail can be found in the previous article, including how cat 4 tickets will work.

It’s important to remember that the SFA guidance released today is the state of play at the point FIFA ran the application data last night. FIFA are unable to run the data again before Tuesday’s deadline.

Therefore even though there will be no further updates, there could still be changes to the thresholds listed below if new applications are received by FIFA between now and Tuesday’s deadline!

RISK OF CANCELLATIONS

There are two categories of people that may see their application being completely unsuccessful, even if they have enough SSC points:

Read more

Following a delay at FIFA’s end to release the data, the SFA have finally been able to update fans regarding their World Cup ticket application.

It’s important to remember that the SFA guidance released today is the state of play at the point FIFA ran the application data last week. All applications up to that point are included - including those that missed the soft deadline of 21st December. Any applications made after the data was pulled, or any applications that have not yet been submitted, are obviously not included. Therefore, the guidance is only “as things stand”, and could change if there are late applications submitted this week.

The data will be run once more by FIFA by the end of this week, providing an update to the SFA, who can then update their guidance to fans over the weekend. It is therefore imperative that you amend applications within the next 48 hours.

The headline from the guidance is that, as expected, all three group matches are ‘oversubscribed’. This means that not everyone that has applied for an SSC ticket will get one. There were a combined 27,360 applications for the three group stage matches, for Scotland’s combined allocation of 11,514.

If you are unlikely to get a ticket through the SSC, ensure you have a FIFA general ballot application in before next Tuesday’s deadline (13th January). It is a maximum of four tickets per household, so an application for 1 ticket with the SSC means you could apply for a maximum 3 through FIFA ballot.

$60 CAT 4 TICKETS

Read more

Read more