A Scottish History of European Finals

Tonight will see the 200th appearance of a Scotsman in a UEFA Final

Scotland’s John McGinn put in a captain’s performance for Aston Villa 13 days ago in the Europa League Semi Final, scoring two superb goals against Nottingham Forest to secure Aston Villa’s place in the UEFA Europa League Final in Istanbul. Tonight, he will join a long list of Scots who have played in European finals over the past 60 years.

The Scots have a rich history in UEFA competition, and this includes finals. The Scots have scored in finals, won finals as captain, won finals as manager and, on a few rare nights, supplied an entire Scottish XI in a UEFA Final.

This article is a comprehensive history of Scotsmen in European competition, it covers the Scots that have played in finals, scored in finals, managed in finals, and much more. If you’re not yet a subscriber, please take out a 7-day free trial to read over 350 articles before deciding if you think 50p per week represents good value.

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Semi-Final Brace List

McGinn’s double in a Semi-Final is a pretty rare event; he’s the first Scotsman to score two at this stage of UEFA competition since Mark McGhee for Aberdeen in 1983, when the Dons cruised to a 5-1 first leg victory over Belgium’s Waterschei.

Only five Scotsmen have achieved the feat, but remarkably from the five Semi-Final double goalscorers, only three of them were enough to help their team reach the final!

The five Scotsmen to score two goals in a UEFA Semi-Final match.

John McMillan’s two goals for Rangers in 1960 proved in vain, as Eintracht Frankfurt eliminated the Gers 12-4 on aggregate. To this day, that remains the highest scoring European Cup/Champions League Semi-Final tie in history.

Similarly, Stevie Chalmers scored two for Celtic in 1964, as it looked like Celtic were cruising to their first European final with a 3-0 1st leg win. However the Hoops would lose the return leg 4-0, which was the fifth occurrence of a side being eliminated from Europe after winning the first leg by 3 goals. This has only happened 65 times in total in UEFA run competitions - most recently to Bodø/Glimt - who lost 5-0 in Portugal after beating Sporting 3-0 in Norway earlier this season.

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Scots in UEFA Finals

Two weeks ago, I suffered from a case of ‘premature posting’ on my social media pages. As John McGinn scored to secure Villa’s progression to the final, I thought I’d count how often a Scotsman has reached a European final. In my haste, I failed to select a few substitute nationality columns and so the number posted on social media is slightly out. However, the correct numbers are all discussed in full in this article.