Now that Scotland is officially eliminated, I thought I would share my full experience.
This is a story that actually started years before the moment of truth.
I've had a USA or Scotland World Cup match on my bucket list for as long as I've had a bucket list. Back in 2018 when it was announced that the US was going to host the 2026 World Cup, I realized that my most realistic opportunity was possibly presenting itself.
I knew that USA tickets would be nearly impossible to get my hands on, and since my mom was born and raised in bonnie wee Scotland, it wasn't much of a reach to start thinking it would be ideal to get to a Scotland match.
I've visited Scotland five times so far and the Scots are unquestionably my favorite people in the world - their warmth, humor, kindness, toughness, and independent spirit are just unmatched. I also have a couple of fun books "celebrating" the Tartan Army's passion and exploits through the years and there is little in this world I love more than a fun, passionate fan base. Check out "We Support You Ever More" by Ronnie McDevitt and "Over the Top with the Tartan Army" by Andrew McArthur to get a taste of the history and fun.
Scotland had not qualified for a World Cup since 1998, so the reality of any of this coming together was pretty much just blind hope.
When my wife and I were in Scotland in 2023, hiking the West Highland Way, it happened to overlap with the 150th meeting between Scotland and England which was being played at Hampden Park in Glasgow. Had I done a better job of researching in advance and realized the overlap we could have tacked on another day to our trip, taken a train from Tyndrum (which was right where we scheduled to be that day along our hike) to Glasgow, gone to the match, and then taken a train back the following morning to pick back up where we left off. Instead, we were in a wee village, Bridge of Orchy, the night of the match and the hotel next door had a bar & restaurant. While we were being seated to eat we accidentally blocked the view of the telly momentarily and got an earful from the group of faithful watching. After dinner we were very careful to duck as we walked back past, drawing good natured cheers for learning from our mistake. I really came to regret not getting to that match - especially after seeing the video of the epic crowd signing Flower of Scotland.
On the way home, I picked up jerseys for myself and my son, B, just in case.
Later that fall, as B and I were driving to Arlington to watch the Ags beat the pigs on the gridiron, I dropped every version of Flower of Scotland that I could find into our playlist, primarily to annoy B....I think we got over 2 solid hours of it and it cemented the tune in our heads forever. I've kept one version in our normal gameday playlist to this day just to continuing to nurture the seed of hope so we would be familiar with it, just in case.
Now, the logistics of the Scottish squad even making it to North America came into play. As I mentioned, the country has been waiting 28 years since they last qualified for the World Cup (1998 France). For Scotland's qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, EUFA pitted them up with a group of Denmark, Belarus, & Greece.
The results of the first five matches were:
0-0 at Denmark
2-0 at Belarus
3-1 v Greece
2-1 v Belarus
2-3 at Greece
The Greece loss was a killer and meant that going into the final match against Denmark, in Glasgow, they trailed the Danes by 2 points in the group standings and it would require an outright win to earn the 3 points necessary to jump the Danes and qualify for the World Cup. High stakes to say the least!
What unfolded turned out to be one of the most spectacular games I've ever seen. Scott McTominay had a now legendary bicycle kick to put the Scots up 1-0 early, but Denmark equaled, then a second goal by Shankland made it 2-1 and the Hampden crowd felt pretty good - but then the Danes scored again to even the score before Kieran Tierney set the stands on fire with a cracker from the top of the 18 yard box in the 93' to take the lead! The final nail was a midfield shot in the 98' that snuck over the forward keepers head before he could race back to goal! Even the announcer shouted, "SHOOT IT!" when he saw how far forward the keeper had drifted. 4-2 Scots win! WE'RE A COMIN' was the rally cry afterwards!
Tickets were a mess. FIFA announced a lottery to be held prior to the group selections, so you could put in for tickets without knowing which teams would be in the match - I sat this round out. Then they announced the groups and an additional lottery - I put in for all three Scotland matches, a Netherlands match in Houston and an Argentina match in Dallas. I didn't win any, and apparently no one else did either because the secondary ticket market and hotel prices exploded. No one knew at the time that FIFA was going to have three more rounds of ticketing but they kept that quiet to keep the prices artificially inflated. At this point, I gave up on the whole thing - between the ticket resale prices and hotel prices, the event was priced out of my saved up budget. Thankfully, the more rounds that happened the softer and softer the market became and I was finally able to get tickets in the 5th round.....but of course, not without my credit card company flagging the payment as potentially fraudulent and me not knowing if the tickets actually got paid for/secured for a few hours.
Scotland was matched up with Haiti on Saturday evening of the Cup's opening weekend, so B and I caught a suuuuper early 5am flight to Boston on Friday morning partially to give us some time in the city, but mostly because we were flying on points and that was where we could stretch our points.
We landed, took a taxi to our hotel, and then went and found some brunch nearby. It was close to Boston Common so we wandered around there a bit and ran into our first proper encounter with the Tartan Army - it was kilts, jerseys, and bagpipes - hundreds and hundreds of them! Everyone was happy and friendly, obviously excited about the weekend.
From there we walked down to the harbor, saw where the Boston Tea Party happened and caught a train out to Fenway Park where the Red Sox were hosting the Rangers. What an incredible and beautiful ballpark Fenway is - it, along with Wrigley Field, are truly the gems of American sports venues.
I was rooting for a close game with a Red Sox lead because I have never seen Aroldis Chapman pitch and it would take a save situation to get him into the ballgame, but the baseball gods had other ideas and the Sox routed the Rangers, 10-1.
We walked back to the hotel after the game and the Scots were out on the town in full force, signing songs, and making friends everywhere you looked down the streets. A group on one side of the street would start a "No Scotland, No Party!" chant and a group on the other side of the street would try to out sing them and back and forth.
We chose to sleep in on Saturday morning and then do some light sight seeing before heading to the train station to ride out to Gillette Stadium (renamed Boston Stadium for the World Cup). B wanted to find the site of the Boston Massacre and after that we found the Sam Adams statue outside the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. The Tartan Army was EVERYWHERE, spilling out of bars and restaurants in great spirits.
The train was wild. The stadium isn't actually in Boston proper, it is in Foxborough which is a 45ish minute train ride outside the city. Tickets had to be booked in advance and there were five boarding groups (A through E). My only anxiety is missing something that I have tickets for, resulting in super early arrivals at airports, concerts, and sporting events. Naturally, I booked us in group A and the instructions I received said to arrive to South Station between 2:15-2:45pm to board and when we walked up at 2:20 we were shocked to find a SEVEN block long line just to get to the start of the ACTUAL entrance/security queue. The line was 90% kilts and tartan and it was a circus atmosphere - it seemed like the entire island of Scotland had flown over for the events. Everyone was excited and knew that with a 9pm start time the length of the line wasn't going to keep anyone from missing it. There were pipers playing and songs of "WE'RE A COMIN'!" and "Super John McGinn" broke out regularly.
It took us an hour and a half to get onto the train and while in the final holding area it was just a smashed mob. The guy in-between B and me was shocked when he heard us speak, "Yer American!?!? Yer nae Scot-ish?" Somehow, within the four or five minutes of standing there, we ended up singing "No Scotland, No Party" to his friend's daughter on FaceTime while he was wearing my tartan hat. That was just how the vibe of the whole weekend was, they just suck you into the fun.
When we got off the train in Foxborough we were still 3 or 4 hours before kickoff and we needed to figure out our plan for food. Outside the stadium there is a quasi-attached outdoor mall but it was completely overrun - lines out the doors of every bar and restaurant and just a crush of humanity. It was so crazy that even with all that time I didn't think we could wait, get served, eat, and still make it into the stadium in time for kickoff. We slipped into a Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which hadn't been overrun yet - likely because they don't serve beer. By the time we left it was cheek to cheek in there too though.
B had the brilliant idea of searching for food off-site and found an Olive Garden about 3/4 of a mile away so we just walked that direction and found that we could be seated and fed immediately.
We went through security and a ticket scan to get back onto the premises. I'm always slightly nervous my tickets won't scan, even though I got them directly from FIFA. While we were in line, a group of Hatian fans started singing, "No Scotland No Party" and everyone had a good laugh at the comraderie. Getting through that checkpoint got us to where we could go to the fan zone for a while and then to get into the actual stadium we had to scan our ticket again.
We walked around a lot trying to find our seats, which was more challenging than we expected - but as it turned out, for a good reason. FIFA sold the tickets in three price "levels" and you basically selected which level you were willing to pay, but not your section or seat. I had opted for the middle level because I had read that there were more tickets allocated to it and it was still x3 less than the scalper "get in" prices I was seeing on the secondary market.
A few weeks prior to the game the seats were assigned by FIFA and I was more interested in making sure I secured those and got then into my digital wallet than I was where they actually were - it didn't really matter, I just wanted to be in the stadium and we were!
As we were walking through the stadium, there were directions on the signs to numbered sections but not ours, until we got to a ramp on the far side of the stadium that directed us up (as we were going up, we saw a sniper positioned on a roof - hopefully a good guy). As we reached the top of the ramp we started thinking, "Uhm, are these club seats?" And when the gentleman checking tickets assured us that we were in the right spot we looked at each other in disbelief! The club area was foreign to us - full bars, clean bathrooms, enormous wall-sized televisions. We got some drinks (I got a wee dram of scotch for the occasion) and then found our seats and sat down to enjoy the excitement buildup as kick approached.
The national anthems were awesome - there were way more Haiti fans in the stadium than what we felt earlier in the day - it was probably 30% of the crowd and their national pride was evident. When Flower of Scotland started, it was goosebump level beautiful. B and I sang at full voice along with the other ~50,000 Scotland supporters - after the match it was circulated that the noise during the anthem reached 125 db, which was the loudest sound ever recorded at a World Cup game.
As the match got under way, we did experience a very unexpected situation. I don't know if it had to do with the specific section we were in but there were shouts from behind for everyone to "sit doon". Looking around the stadium everyone in every other section was standing so this seemed a suprise to the "standers". It turned into a bit of a back and forth distraction for the first 20 min or so:
"Ah didnae pay awl this money tae watch yer arse", retorted by "We ner sit doon for a proper football match".
I think the "sitters" were just a loud minority and eventually lost out but, frankly, I was shocked anyone was sitting in the first place - this was SCOTLAND IN THE WORLD CUP! Like I said, every other section we could see was fully up on their feet.
There were a couple nervy moments early but Scotland got on the score board behind a John McGinn ricochet and after the initial celebration, the stadium burst into a long joyous "Super John McGinn" song.
WE'VE GOT MCGINN! SUPER JOHN MCGINN! I JUST DON'T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND. HE'S STEVE CLARKE'S MAN, HE'S BETTER THAN ZIDANE, WE'VE GOT SUPER JOHN MCGINN!
In the second half, Haiti managed to find their footing and had some strong buildups causing legitimate concerns but they just couldn't get the net to stretch and after the final whistle we celebrated with a boysterous version of "Yessir, I Can Boogie" sung loudly by all!
Knowing that all five boarding groups for the train were going to descend upon the boarding station simultaneously, and knowing we needed to leave our hotel for the airport at 4:15am, and realizing it was about 11:15pm when the game ended, we decided to book it to the train and try and be on the front end of the crowd.
As we exited the stadium the winning crowd broke into a continuous song, "WE'RE A COMIN'! WE'RE A COMIN! WE'RE A COMIN' DOWN THE ROAD! WHEN YOU HEAR THE NOISE OF THE TARTAN ARMY BOYS, WE'LL BE A COMIN' DOWN THE ROAD!"
We got on the train pretty smoothly, got back to South Station, walked back to the hotel, showered and crashed at about 2am. That 3:45am alarm came quick but we made our flight.
This was one of those events that through the years you play out in your head and build it up and build it up, giving a huge opportunity for the actual experience to not live up to expectations, but this absolutely exceeded my hopes and expectations. It was genuinely the greatest sports events I've ever been to. The team, the company of B, the city of Boston, and really the Tartan Army made that a reality.
I wish they could have advanced, because my journey was a mere fraction of the time the Scots had to wait between World Cups
This is a story that actually started years before the moment of truth.
I've had a USA or Scotland World Cup match on my bucket list for as long as I've had a bucket list. Back in 2018 when it was announced that the US was going to host the 2026 World Cup, I realized that my most realistic opportunity was possibly presenting itself.
I knew that USA tickets would be nearly impossible to get my hands on, and since my mom was born and raised in bonnie wee Scotland, it wasn't much of a reach to start thinking it would be ideal to get to a Scotland match.
I've visited Scotland five times so far and the Scots are unquestionably my favorite people in the world - their warmth, humor, kindness, toughness, and independent spirit are just unmatched. I also have a couple of fun books "celebrating" the Tartan Army's passion and exploits through the years and there is little in this world I love more than a fun, passionate fan base. Check out "We Support You Ever More" by Ronnie McDevitt and "Over the Top with the Tartan Army" by Andrew McArthur to get a taste of the history and fun.
Scotland had not qualified for a World Cup since 1998, so the reality of any of this coming together was pretty much just blind hope.
When my wife and I were in Scotland in 2023, hiking the West Highland Way, it happened to overlap with the 150th meeting between Scotland and England which was being played at Hampden Park in Glasgow. Had I done a better job of researching in advance and realized the overlap we could have tacked on another day to our trip, taken a train from Tyndrum (which was right where we scheduled to be that day along our hike) to Glasgow, gone to the match, and then taken a train back the following morning to pick back up where we left off. Instead, we were in a wee village, Bridge of Orchy, the night of the match and the hotel next door had a bar & restaurant. While we were being seated to eat we accidentally blocked the view of the telly momentarily and got an earful from the group of faithful watching. After dinner we were very careful to duck as we walked back past, drawing good natured cheers for learning from our mistake. I really came to regret not getting to that match - especially after seeing the video of the epic crowd signing Flower of Scotland.
On the way home, I picked up jerseys for myself and my son, B, just in case.
Later that fall, as B and I were driving to Arlington to watch the Ags beat the pigs on the gridiron, I dropped every version of Flower of Scotland that I could find into our playlist, primarily to annoy B....I think we got over 2 solid hours of it and it cemented the tune in our heads forever. I've kept one version in our normal gameday playlist to this day just to continuing to nurture the seed of hope so we would be familiar with it, just in case.
Now, the logistics of the Scottish squad even making it to North America came into play. As I mentioned, the country has been waiting 28 years since they last qualified for the World Cup (1998 France). For Scotland's qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, EUFA pitted them up with a group of Denmark, Belarus, & Greece.
The results of the first five matches were:
0-0 at Denmark
2-0 at Belarus
3-1 v Greece
2-1 v Belarus
2-3 at Greece
The Greece loss was a killer and meant that going into the final match against Denmark, in Glasgow, they trailed the Danes by 2 points in the group standings and it would require an outright win to earn the 3 points necessary to jump the Danes and qualify for the World Cup. High stakes to say the least!
What unfolded turned out to be one of the most spectacular games I've ever seen. Scott McTominay had a now legendary bicycle kick to put the Scots up 1-0 early, but Denmark equaled, then a second goal by Shankland made it 2-1 and the Hampden crowd felt pretty good - but then the Danes scored again to even the score before Kieran Tierney set the stands on fire with a cracker from the top of the 18 yard box in the 93' to take the lead! The final nail was a midfield shot in the 98' that snuck over the forward keepers head before he could race back to goal! Even the announcer shouted, "SHOOT IT!" when he saw how far forward the keeper had drifted. 4-2 Scots win! WE'RE A COMIN' was the rally cry afterwards!
Tickets were a mess. FIFA announced a lottery to be held prior to the group selections, so you could put in for tickets without knowing which teams would be in the match - I sat this round out. Then they announced the groups and an additional lottery - I put in for all three Scotland matches, a Netherlands match in Houston and an Argentina match in Dallas. I didn't win any, and apparently no one else did either because the secondary ticket market and hotel prices exploded. No one knew at the time that FIFA was going to have three more rounds of ticketing but they kept that quiet to keep the prices artificially inflated. At this point, I gave up on the whole thing - between the ticket resale prices and hotel prices, the event was priced out of my saved up budget. Thankfully, the more rounds that happened the softer and softer the market became and I was finally able to get tickets in the 5th round.....but of course, not without my credit card company flagging the payment as potentially fraudulent and me not knowing if the tickets actually got paid for/secured for a few hours.
Scotland was matched up with Haiti on Saturday evening of the Cup's opening weekend, so B and I caught a suuuuper early 5am flight to Boston on Friday morning partially to give us some time in the city, but mostly because we were flying on points and that was where we could stretch our points.
We landed, took a taxi to our hotel, and then went and found some brunch nearby. It was close to Boston Common so we wandered around there a bit and ran into our first proper encounter with the Tartan Army - it was kilts, jerseys, and bagpipes - hundreds and hundreds of them! Everyone was happy and friendly, obviously excited about the weekend.
From there we walked down to the harbor, saw where the Boston Tea Party happened and caught a train out to Fenway Park where the Red Sox were hosting the Rangers. What an incredible and beautiful ballpark Fenway is - it, along with Wrigley Field, are truly the gems of American sports venues.
I was rooting for a close game with a Red Sox lead because I have never seen Aroldis Chapman pitch and it would take a save situation to get him into the ballgame, but the baseball gods had other ideas and the Sox routed the Rangers, 10-1.
We walked back to the hotel after the game and the Scots were out on the town in full force, signing songs, and making friends everywhere you looked down the streets. A group on one side of the street would start a "No Scotland, No Party!" chant and a group on the other side of the street would try to out sing them and back and forth.
We chose to sleep in on Saturday morning and then do some light sight seeing before heading to the train station to ride out to Gillette Stadium (renamed Boston Stadium for the World Cup). B wanted to find the site of the Boston Massacre and after that we found the Sam Adams statue outside the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. The Tartan Army was EVERYWHERE, spilling out of bars and restaurants in great spirits.
The train was wild. The stadium isn't actually in Boston proper, it is in Foxborough which is a 45ish minute train ride outside the city. Tickets had to be booked in advance and there were five boarding groups (A through E). My only anxiety is missing something that I have tickets for, resulting in super early arrivals at airports, concerts, and sporting events. Naturally, I booked us in group A and the instructions I received said to arrive to South Station between 2:15-2:45pm to board and when we walked up at 2:20 we were shocked to find a SEVEN block long line just to get to the start of the ACTUAL entrance/security queue. The line was 90% kilts and tartan and it was a circus atmosphere - it seemed like the entire island of Scotland had flown over for the events. Everyone was excited and knew that with a 9pm start time the length of the line wasn't going to keep anyone from missing it. There were pipers playing and songs of "WE'RE A COMIN'!" and "Super John McGinn" broke out regularly.
It took us an hour and a half to get onto the train and while in the final holding area it was just a smashed mob. The guy in-between B and me was shocked when he heard us speak, "Yer American!?!? Yer nae Scot-ish?" Somehow, within the four or five minutes of standing there, we ended up singing "No Scotland, No Party" to his friend's daughter on FaceTime while he was wearing my tartan hat. That was just how the vibe of the whole weekend was, they just suck you into the fun.
When we got off the train in Foxborough we were still 3 or 4 hours before kickoff and we needed to figure out our plan for food. Outside the stadium there is a quasi-attached outdoor mall but it was completely overrun - lines out the doors of every bar and restaurant and just a crush of humanity. It was so crazy that even with all that time I didn't think we could wait, get served, eat, and still make it into the stadium in time for kickoff. We slipped into a Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which hadn't been overrun yet - likely because they don't serve beer. By the time we left it was cheek to cheek in there too though.
B had the brilliant idea of searching for food off-site and found an Olive Garden about 3/4 of a mile away so we just walked that direction and found that we could be seated and fed immediately.
We went through security and a ticket scan to get back onto the premises. I'm always slightly nervous my tickets won't scan, even though I got them directly from FIFA. While we were in line, a group of Hatian fans started singing, "No Scotland No Party" and everyone had a good laugh at the comraderie. Getting through that checkpoint got us to where we could go to the fan zone for a while and then to get into the actual stadium we had to scan our ticket again.
We walked around a lot trying to find our seats, which was more challenging than we expected - but as it turned out, for a good reason. FIFA sold the tickets in three price "levels" and you basically selected which level you were willing to pay, but not your section or seat. I had opted for the middle level because I had read that there were more tickets allocated to it and it was still x3 less than the scalper "get in" prices I was seeing on the secondary market.
A few weeks prior to the game the seats were assigned by FIFA and I was more interested in making sure I secured those and got then into my digital wallet than I was where they actually were - it didn't really matter, I just wanted to be in the stadium and we were!
As we were walking through the stadium, there were directions on the signs to numbered sections but not ours, until we got to a ramp on the far side of the stadium that directed us up (as we were going up, we saw a sniper positioned on a roof - hopefully a good guy). As we reached the top of the ramp we started thinking, "Uhm, are these club seats?" And when the gentleman checking tickets assured us that we were in the right spot we looked at each other in disbelief! The club area was foreign to us - full bars, clean bathrooms, enormous wall-sized televisions. We got some drinks (I got a wee dram of scotch for the occasion) and then found our seats and sat down to enjoy the excitement buildup as kick approached.
The national anthems were awesome - there were way more Haiti fans in the stadium than what we felt earlier in the day - it was probably 30% of the crowd and their national pride was evident. When Flower of Scotland started, it was goosebump level beautiful. B and I sang at full voice along with the other ~50,000 Scotland supporters - after the match it was circulated that the noise during the anthem reached 125 db, which was the loudest sound ever recorded at a World Cup game.
As the match got under way, we did experience a very unexpected situation. I don't know if it had to do with the specific section we were in but there were shouts from behind for everyone to "sit doon". Looking around the stadium everyone in every other section was standing so this seemed a suprise to the "standers". It turned into a bit of a back and forth distraction for the first 20 min or so:
"Ah didnae pay awl this money tae watch yer arse", retorted by "We ner sit doon for a proper football match".
I think the "sitters" were just a loud minority and eventually lost out but, frankly, I was shocked anyone was sitting in the first place - this was SCOTLAND IN THE WORLD CUP! Like I said, every other section we could see was fully up on their feet.
There were a couple nervy moments early but Scotland got on the score board behind a John McGinn ricochet and after the initial celebration, the stadium burst into a long joyous "Super John McGinn" song.
WE'VE GOT MCGINN! SUPER JOHN MCGINN! I JUST DON'T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND. HE'S STEVE CLARKE'S MAN, HE'S BETTER THAN ZIDANE, WE'VE GOT SUPER JOHN MCGINN!
In the second half, Haiti managed to find their footing and had some strong buildups causing legitimate concerns but they just couldn't get the net to stretch and after the final whistle we celebrated with a boysterous version of "Yessir, I Can Boogie" sung loudly by all!
Knowing that all five boarding groups for the train were going to descend upon the boarding station simultaneously, and knowing we needed to leave our hotel for the airport at 4:15am, and realizing it was about 11:15pm when the game ended, we decided to book it to the train and try and be on the front end of the crowd.
As we exited the stadium the winning crowd broke into a continuous song, "WE'RE A COMIN'! WE'RE A COMIN! WE'RE A COMIN' DOWN THE ROAD! WHEN YOU HEAR THE NOISE OF THE TARTAN ARMY BOYS, WE'LL BE A COMIN' DOWN THE ROAD!"
We got on the train pretty smoothly, got back to South Station, walked back to the hotel, showered and crashed at about 2am. That 3:45am alarm came quick but we made our flight.
This was one of those events that through the years you play out in your head and build it up and build it up, giving a huge opportunity for the actual experience to not live up to expectations, but this absolutely exceeded my hopes and expectations. It was genuinely the greatest sports events I've ever been to. The team, the company of B, the city of Boston, and really the Tartan Army made that a reality.
I wish they could have advanced, because my journey was a mere fraction of the time the Scots had to wait between World Cups
