Surely it can’t be 12 years since I started this blog. I remember the first entry: a World Cup conversation with the Avis car rental agent. He’d rented many cars to me over the years, but it wasn’t until he saw me in my Scotland top, en route to the airport to catch my flight to Brazil, that we discovered a shared love of the game. We talked so long I almost missed my flight!

I remember the date: June 18, 2014. Shamefully, it was also my daughter Ellie’s 21st birthday. Terrible fathering to schedule a World Cup departure on that date. In my defence, though, at 12:01 a.m. on the 18th I bought Ellie her first beer—at Harry’s Chocolate Shop on the Purdue campus. I don’t know if Harry does, or ever did, sell chocolate. I believe it was a speakeasy during Prohibition. No secret knocks on hidden cellar doors were required to buy a beer in 2014.

Actually, the Avis guy wasn’t the very first post on the blog—that was simply the first one from the trip. The true first entry was a wistful reminiscence of being a wee boy at Hampden Park in Glasgow when Joe Jordan headed in the winning goal against Czechoslovakia to take Scotland to the 1974 World Cup in Germany.

A trip to that World Cup for wee James was unthinkable—unaffordable in those days, and indeed for many World Cups to come. But by 2014, with a few more resources to my name, such a trip had become thinkable.

At the urging of one of my older daughter Lorna’s friends, the original plan was to helicopter into the upper reaches of the Amazon and canoe downriver to the World Cup. A flight of fancy, of course, but there’s a not insignificant part of me that regrets not saying, “Screw it—where’s my paddle?”

Instead, with the steadying influence of my World Cup mate Dave Warner, a more practical plan was hatched.

Dave! I really only knew him in passing from the football (I still can’t say soccer) community in West Lafayette. But over three amazing World Cup adventures during the following eight years, we developed a deep bond of friendship—the kind that only comes from sharing questionable accommodation on three continents. I won’t tell if he doesn’t.

My only disappointment on that trip to Brazil in 2014? As the blog title used to remind us: Scotland Didn’t Qualify.

Neither did we in Russia in 2018. Nor in Qatar in 2022.

Still, who needs to be burdened by all that pesky hope and expectation? Free of those shackles, I was able to project them onto surrogates—first the Netherlands, then Belgium, and finally Senegal.

My endorsement didn’t really help any of them.

No such projection this time. At the fourth time of asking, Scotland did qualify, and the title of this blog has been changed accordingly.

With that change comes the weight of anticipation and belief. Only Haiti, Morocco, and Brazil stand between us and an escape from the group stage for the first time ever.

For those of us old enough to remember, the make-up of that group harkens back to our group at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. Then, we drew with (pre-revolutionary) Iran, lost to Costa Rica—a football minnow—and beat eventual finalists the Netherlands, but not by enough goals to advance on goal difference.

My only hope is that the exuberant optimism of Ally MacLeod has been replaced by the wily canniness of Steve Clarke, our current manager. But what wouldn’t we give to see another flamboyant goal like the one Archie Gemmill scored against the Dutch in ’78?

There is hope.

Despite “boring, boring Clarke,” he has guided us to two Euros and a World Cup in the last six years, and we’ve scored 12 goals in our last five games—some absolute worldies among them, including the four against Denmark in the final qualifier. Scotland doesn’t score goals like that.

Do we?

I’ve been struggling to get into this World Cup. No buzz.

For example, I was in my local on Friday night. Ten TV screens and not a hint of football—well, not my kind of football anyway.

I’m on a business trip today and writing this in San Francisco airport. Whether it’s because San Francisco is a host city (well, Santa Clara, home of the Niners, just a few miles to the south), or perhaps because of a bigger and more enthusiastic Latino community, I’m finally seeing people walking around in footie tops. Just the host nations—USA, Canada, and Mexico—for now. And had I known about this gathering at our factory, I would have extended my trip a day or two to be part of it!

But by this time next week, the other 45 countries will be here, visas permitting, and the carnival can commence.

Myself included, with my Scotland tops packed for the group games against Haiti and Morocco in Boston.

I’ll decide about other cities and games once Scotland get out of the group. A Round of 32 match in Guadalajara, Mexico, would be awesome.

The only decision to be made now is whether or not to wear my kilt on the flight to Boston next Friday.

I can’t wait!!!