Key events
The teams
Spain: Unai Simón, Carvajal, Le Normand, Laporte, Balde, Gavi, Rodrigo, Merino, Torres, Oyarzabal, Morata.
Substitutes: Kepa, Raya, Sancet, Pau Torres, Fabián Ruiz, Zaragoza, Joselu, García, Ansu Fati, Zubimendi, Fran García, Jesús Navas.
Scotland: Gunn, Hickey, Hendry, Porteous, McKenna, Robertson, McGregor, McTominay, McGinn, Christie, Dykes.
Substitutes: Kelly, Clark, Souttar, Cooper, Adams, Gilmour, Armstrong, Brown, Ferguson, Taylor, Patterson, McLean.
Referee: Serdar Gözübüyük (Netherlands).
preamble
Scotland is so close and yet so far. They will be the first team to qualify for Euro 2024 if they draw with Spain in Seville tonight or if Norway fail to win in Cyprus. However, these are big ifs.
If.
If.
See?! Cyprus have lost all of their Group A games so far, scoring 17 goals, a rate of 3.4 per game. Tonight Erling Haaland will be targeting them. Spain bounced back from the Scott-McTominay-induced defeat at Hampden by posting seven wins against Georgia and six against the aforementioned Cypriots. Meanwhile, Scotland are not required to appear in the 150th anniversary heritage match against England. So none of this is ideal.
On the other hand, Scotland have a streak of five wins in a row in Group A. They are unbeaten in nine competitive games, a sequence in which promotion to the top division of the Nations League was at stake. And perhaps most importantly, you can’t write off a team that has the aforementioned McTominay goal machine. Never. Ask anyone from Batumi to Barcelona to Brentford about it. You just can’t do it.
So keep your fingers crossed. And if someone in dark blue can score a goal even half as good as the one David Narey scored across town at the Benito Villamarín during the 1982 Copa Mundial de la Fifa España™, all the better. Kick-off is at 7:45pm BST and 8:45pm at Estadio La Cartuja de Sevilla. It’s on!
