Macedonia 1-0 Scotland: A poor, poor start

September 6th, 2008 | by: Ian Rose |

The Scots’ World Cup qualifying campaign started with a whimper rather than a bang today, as we went down 1-0 to Macedonia. It was frankly a deserved result for the Macedonians, who are turning out in recent years to be a bit of a super-minnow. This is the side that beat Croatia and drew with England in the Euro qualifiers, and we would have been foolish to underestimate them. Still, they were beatable on the day if Scotland would have stepped up to the challenge. We did not, and now any advantage we gained by being a second rather than third seed may be gone.

The goal came by way of an early free kick deflection by Ilčo Naumoski. It was just one of many, many defensive errors by the Scotland back line, and the end result could have been far worse. The midfield lacked any edge, the defense was (admittedly injured but) shaky. James McFadden once again tried to play hero man, and wasn’t far off, but couldn’t quite close the deal.

In this qualifying group in particular, the margin of error is very small. There are only eight matches in the group, only 24 points up for grabs for each team. George Burley, who came in with great expectations but has fallen instead on hard times (Dickens references for the win), predicted we needed 17 points to be sure of qualifying. That is now 17 out of 21 instead of 24.

What all this means is that already, so early in the campaign, the results of other sides in the group become extremely important to us. It’s too early to say that we need help to qualify, but it’s not far from being true. As I write this article, Norway and Iceland are tied at 0-0 after about a half-hour of play. Norway just barely missed out on Euro 2008 qualification, like us, and will be shooting for a high finish in the group, so without being unfair to Iceland, a win for Iceland or a draw would be the best result for us, and either way, we really need to take points from our Wednesday trip to face the Icelanders.

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http://epl.theoffside.com Rob

Super-minnows or not, thats a pretty bad result.
ghost of steve finnan

Well, you guys were always fighting for 2nd and a playoff place b/c Holland is easily the class of the group. Don’t worry, Macedonia will lose to everyone else at some point in the group and will not be in the race for 2nd. If you can take 4 of 6 points from Norway and not have any more ugly slip ups, you’re still good for 2nd.
jerry

Well well,race for second?i dont tink you manage tird place!!you already got a must win game in iceland!!you play rubbish.
Toni

yu guys seem to be talking about scotland and norway for second place don’t forget about Macedonia we showed that we can beat teams like scotland never underestimate Macedonia otherwise they will punnish you unlucky scotland
http://scotland.worldcupblog.org Ian

Toni is right. Jerry doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so ignore him, but Toni has a point. Macedonia is a very dangerous team, and especially after this week, no one should be counting them out. They did very well in Euro qualifying, and I expect them to do well here too.
Matt

Hey! This is Matt from Norway’s blog. Good to see Scotland got back on track against Iceland. Looking forward to seeing how it goes when we play against each other.
http://scotland.worldcupblog.org Ian Rose

Thanks for reading and commenting, Matt. I’d love to say good luck to Norway, and I do wish you well, but you’re one of our big competitors for second place in this group, so I don’t wish you TOO well. Cheers.
undutchable

macedonia is allready punishing everybody that watches them play. what a pain to the eyes! my dear god, but you have to give them something, they give an excellent show of the 9-0-1 formation. some added balkan theatrics completed the evening.