Scotland's Ten-Year Winless Streak
A look at Scotland's friendly record, and our record against diddies
Scotland will play their ‘farewell’ match on Saturday; the last game before the team leave for America for the World Cup. We then have the final pre-World Cup friendly next Saturday night at 9pm, which takes place in New Jersey against Bolivia, live on BBC Scotland.
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.
