The high water mark of the enthusiasm was reached with the send-off of the players, as the squad was paraded round a packed Hampden in an open-topped bus. Thousands more lined the route to Prestwick airport with toddlers brought from the villages of deepest Ayrshire to cheer the bus from flyover bridges. No other team departing the country had received such a send-off. They were to be joined in Argentina by a UK-wide press pack, (Scotland being the only representatives of the Home Nations) and thousands of Scottish fans who had travelled by plane, boat and, allegedly, submarine. The cries of dismay and derision of this band of travelling fans were to provide the backdrop to the tournament.
The first game of the tournament involved Scotland facing up to Peru in Cordoba. After the pre-tournament hype, it was now time for the Scots to show what they could do on the pitch. The answer, after this display, was not much. The Scots did take the lead, through Jordan, but by half-time the South Americans were level. The second half went from bad to worse as the Peruvians took control. Masson saw his spot-kick saved by Quiroga in the Peru goal, before two goals from the mercurial talent of Cubillas took the game miles beyond Scotland, as energy levels among the Scots sapped.
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After the ignominy of the Peru match and the Johnston scandal, a shell-shocked nation waited for the next encounter, this time with Iran – scarcely a footballing powerhouse - and surely three points in the bag for Ally's Army. Now was the time to put things right. Or not. Iran were certainly underestimated and the Tartan Army were in for another nasty shock. Yet again the Scots took the lead, through an Iskandarian own goal, but a lacklustre display allowed the Iranians to level the game, and they were unlucky not to take all the points from this encounter. The mood of the entire nation was summed up by the television pictures of MacLeod sitting in the dugout with his head in his hands, utterly disconsolate. How could things have gone so badly wrong? It was indeed a “disaster for Scotland.”
