Well, that's it. Scotland are out of the Euros, having lost twice and drawn once. Who knows when we'll next make it to the party?
I have no complaints about the exit - we were just beaten by the better team. And while we started the game reasonably well, the stuffing was really knocked out of us by the goal. Bluntly, though, our problem was up front. If you can't score, you're just not going to get anywhere, and we just didn't take anything like enough of our chances.
(Plus, of course, the truth is that it was the game against the Czech Republic that did for us. That was the team we might have had a chance to beat, especially if we had played then as we did against England and at the start against Croatia. Losing that one meant we were really up against it. Oh well.)
One thing that is odd is the reaction to the various results.
It is fair to say that we over-reacted to the draw against England. Yes, it was a good performance, and it was an unexpectedly good result against a much better team, and it kept us alive in the tournament when we could have been out already. And, yes, there was a certain amount of defiance in the face of a punditry that had arrogantly written us off completely. But it was also a 0-0 draw, not really something to get carried away with.
At the same time, the abject despair after the Czech result and, to a lesser extent, the Croatia result were also over the top. Yes, they were losses, yes there were goals that we really shouldn't have lost, and yes we should have actually taken the chances we did have. But it's also worth noting that we weren't actually expected to win either of those matches - both were against higher ranked teams. And, yes, we were lucky to be at the tournament at all.
So that's that. There are some reasons for hope for the future, but in the present there is also reason to be disappointed. Good luck to Wales and England in their next round matches.
#28: "The Diviners", by Margaret Laurence (a book from The List - thirteen to go)
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