Scotland’s return to the World Cup has arrived with the country’s old nerves intact. From North Carolina, Ewan Murray has been answering questions on Steve Clarke’s selections, an outsider tip and the opener against Haiti, and the mood around the first game is already set: one reader asked if it was reasonable to be scared, and Murray’s answer was yes.
That is hardly an overreaction. Scotland have not been here since France 98, and the team’s first task in 2026 comes against a side that has already prompted a stream of anxious second-guessing from supporters trying to make sense of the bracket, the heat and the scale of the occasion. Murray did not try to calm that down. He called it what it is, saying it is a shorts and T-shirt World Cup, “Steaming hot. Everywhere.”
He also reached for an older scar to explain why Scotland fans know how quickly a bright mood can turn. Murray said he remembered the Costa Rica debacle in Genoa in 1990, when he was a schoolboy and froze a can of Irn-Bru to drink in the second half. He forgot about it. The can exploded. It is the kind of detail that lands because it sounds exactly like Scotland at a major tournament: optimism, habit and the small disaster you never quite see coming.
The squad discussion has not made the mood any simpler. Murray said Scotland can manage without Billy Gilmour, even if the midfielder is still a classy ball player and a miss for the team. He added that Steve Clarke has a tendency not to use Gilmour when others expect he will, and that the issue was sharpened by the fact Gilmour was injured before the squad decision. His Euro 2020/21 was ruined by Covid, so this is not the first time his momentum has been broken at the wrong moment.
That is where the selection talk becomes more than a list of names. Murray said picking Tyler Fletcher ahead of Lennon Miller turned heads, but also made clear that he thinks Fletcher has a really bright future and massively impressed experienced players during training sessions. He said Kieron Bowie and Oli McBurnie had strong cases too. When asked about the omission that might matter most in the short term, Murray did not dodge it. “Very,” he said when pressed on how much Scotland will miss Gilmour, before effectively coming back to the same point: they may miss his touch, but they are not built around him.
There is a reason that kind of hard-nosed view lands now. Murray said Scotland should take Morocco very seriously, but he also argued that modern tournament preparation is nothing like the old days. There is so much information about opposition teams now, he said, compared with previous years when Scotland players, staff and media could be almost ignorant about sides such as Costa Rica, Peru, Iran and Zaire. In other words, the fear is real, but so is the scouting.
That leaves the opener against Haiti as the first true test of whether Scotland’s nerve matches the noise around them. Murray’s answers suggest the answer is not calm, not polished and not romantic. It is better than that. Scotland know more than they once did, they have more to lean on than Billy Gilmour alone, and they are entering a World Cup that will punish hesitation. The next thing that matters is simple enough: whether all that knowledge looks like control when the whistle goes.
