Scotland's World Cup on the brink

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In the last second the heroes are needed. Finances will never be as exciting as football, but we give our best. Contour, business account, company founded, bookkeeping. After our beating from Brazil and subsequent results elsewhere at the World Cup, Scotland's

chances of making the next round are all but gone. How do we end up here? And what lessons can we learn? Hello, I'm Jonathan Sutherland. This is the Scottish Football Podcast, or the news, views and analysis on Friday, the 26th of June. Scotland's World Cup dream looks all but over.

Here's Guimarães through at the edge of the penalty area, opportunity here he leaves it to Israel, Kynia scores! Brazil have a third! It was a night of pain against Brazil,

and a percentage chances of reaching the last 32 are now minuscule. What do we take from this tournament experience? We made it difficult for ourselves. That's it. We gave them the goals, we gave them the game they wanted. Disappointing.

Does the responsibility lie with the manager or the players? And are there deeper issues for the national side? And if so, how do we fix them? And that is a frustration and look, you can speak about structure

and you can speak about patterns of play and moments and how much attention to detail you've got. See if players don't actually perform at the level to make that work. After the deep despair, time now for a deep dive right here on the Scottish Football Podcast.

Before we introduce our guests today, I just want to outline the situation as it stands for Scotland. So we all have a clear picture in terms of our now slim, no, miniscule chances of reaching the the next round as one of the best third-placed sides. First of all, South Africa beating South Korea 1-0 the other night didn't help and then overnight Ecuador produced an unexpected

2-1 victory over Germany. Again, that didn't help. Sweden were then held by Japan to a 1-all draw, also qualifying from third place with four points. Scotland were down to a a 6.89% chance of qualification after that, but are now down to 5.49% after Paraguay

played out a stalemate with Australia, which suited both sides. Now, there are eight groups left to play. Scotland need four third-place teams

to have a worse record than them. It means they need a minimum of four of the following scenarios to play out. I hope you're taking notes.

We need Senegal and Iraq to draw or Iraq to beat Senegal by no more than two goals. That's in group I, in group H we need Uruguay to lose to Spain, in group G Iran to lose to Egypt. On Saturday we need Croatia in group L to lose to Ghana by at least three goals, in

group K DR Congo versus Uzbekistan to be a draw or Uzbekistan to win by no more than three goals. group J, we need Austria and Algeria, we're on three points, a draw would send both of them through, so Scotland need Algeria to lose by two or more goals, or Austria to be beaten by at least four

goals. I hope you are following all of that. In summary, it looks very grim for Scotland and the chances of us going through as I say, well the percentages are very very low indeed. Time Now to introduce our guests, the Heralds football writer at large, Stephen McGowan and the former Rangers Hearts and Mother Woman Fielder and the Halliday. Stephen I'll come to you first. Last

time we had you on it was very somber day because you'd passed up the opportunity of a free bar with all your media colleagues to join us and we were very grateful of that. Is it even somberer this morning? I think if ever we needed a drink it was to eat. I mean knife I was one of the which are also including a few of your BBC colleagues who flew back from Miami to Charlotte

and it feels a bit like going back to wait for the guillotine to fall really because for the reasons you just outlined in terms of the permutations it feels that Scotland are done for. I don't think anybody can have any complaint about that. I think they will deserve to go out to the tournament. I

think if they did find a way to scrape into the last 32 it would make an on to this format and the expanded 48 teams. So no real complaints there. I've got a few complaints about the fact that in the scenarios you've outlined that you can have situations where Austria and Algeria or Australia and Paraguay suits them perfectly fine to play for a draw

and just do that or the fact that some teams know what they've got to do but in terms of Scotland no complaints I think we're just sitting here and shall it now waiting in the inevitable and then it will be time to book fights and get back home. Yeah back in 1982 there was a notorious game where Germany and Austria played out a convenient result and I think it was Algeria.

We've got the brunt of that here, it kind of feels like the Machiavellian machinations are on a slightly different scale given the size of the World Cup these days. and Andy Halliday. We're on sort of Doom watch it feels like for Scotland and I've got a whole lot to do here overnight. Is your World Cup bubble burst? It is I think my whole enthusiasm towards this World Cup, Jonathan's dwindled by the day and when I woke up this morning I seen the results

from last night. Like he says for me that was that was all but over you know it almost felt a sense inevitability when Bosnia managed to beat Qatar and then that was followed up by obviously South Africa beating South Korea during the night and you just felt that people were all doing the mental gymnastics to find out the possibilities of Scotland going

through but once Matias Kunja scored that third goal for Brazil there was always that fear that ultimately it was not going to be enough for us to to progress into the last day or two And then, you know, seeing a nation in Ecuador have real belief that you can go and cause an upset against Germany