The Tyranny of Hope

Two questions: oh god, will it never end? And, how can winning be more fraught with terror than losing?

I write, as you will have guessed, of Scottish football. Today's remarkable, nay logic-defying, triumph in Paris - our first on French soil in, oh, 57 years - was unbearable stuff. I can cope with despair; it's hope I can't stand.

Here's the thing then. With three games left in our murderous Euro 2008 qualifying group, Scotland are - astonishingly - top of the table, ahead of France and Italy (last year's World Cup finalists) and Ukraine (who reached the last eight in Germany). This is not the way the world is supposed to work. Find me the man who predicted the Scots would defeat the French home and away and I'll show you the papers committing him to an asylum. Since 1994, France have played 47 World Cup and European Championship qualifiers: they have been beaten three times. Twice by Scotland. Incroyable ain't the half of it. The best  victory of my life, I think.

So now it just gets worse. People are going to start expecting good things from this plucky, but limited, side. As any student of Scottish football history knows, that's making an appointment Disaster always keeps. At some point it's all going to go horribly, fatally wrong. It's enough to persuade you it'd be best to get the embarrassment out the way early. That way we could watch the games with a spirit of benign disinterest, confident that win, lose or draw the sun would still rise tomorrow. Hope's a bitch, you know.

But no, they've decided to toy with us instead. Right now we live in a world which makes no sense at all. Today's match was unendurable. It required real determination just to keep watching after James McFadden's hysterically implausible, yet inspired, goal had given us a quasi-larcenous lead. Even when French attacks were being repulsed with some ease, you felt convinced to the core that doom lay around the corner. Those minutes seemed stretched to three times their normal length. It was grim, bloody stuff I can tell you. And they call this fun?

Aye, it was almost (but not quite) enough to have one pining for the hapless, shameful days of Berti Vogts. Almost, but not quite. Onwards then, to home tussles with the Italians and Ukraine, plus a trip to Georgia that has catastrophe written all over it. The hope still lives, the dream cannot - or will not - die. Jesus, who knew success could shred your nerves this much? Gloomy defeat is so much easier to swallow.

Right now, however, victory feels pretty damn sweet. It's a strange, unfamiliar sensation. What would it be like to feel this way more often? Not Scottish, that's for sure.

God, grant me relief from this. Just not yet.

Comments

[ndm]

Alex Massie gets to the heart of why US sports are so bad with his sentence "Those minutes seemed stretched to three times their normal length." This being a nailbiting soccer game, time was stretched by a nervous anticipation of imminent disaster. Had it been a nailbiting basketball game time would have been stretched by a surfeit of ads and timeouts.

[doris]

btw, it's just Ukraine, not THE Ukraine, since they gained independence in 1991.

congrats on your victory.

[Panenka'sChip]

On that point re ad breaks and stretching games out, I agree that football is generally better because it doesn't have consistent time outs and stoppages but I did notice, having had half an eye (if that's possible) on the Ukraine vs Italy match which was on RAI - that the Italian broadcaster now put ads in stoppages in play - free kicks, injuries, substitutions etc. becoming similar to TV coverage of cricket in that sense. A very disappointing move.

[kishnevi]

You now have a glimpse of what it's like to be a Red Sox fan.