Scotland secured a routine but important 2-0 victory over Belarus to continue their solid start to World Cup qualifying.<\/p>\n
Friday’s gutsy draw in Denmark was hard-earned but would have mattered little if Steve Clarke’s side had then failed to beat Group C’s lowest-ranked side.<\/p>\n
However, they got the job done comfortably enough, thanks to a goal from Che Adams who then helped force an own goal from Zakhar Volkov after the break.<\/p>\n
With the game played in an empty stadium in Hungary because of Belarus’ support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the match was a throwback to Covid times with no crackling atmosphere to help it come to life.<\/p>\n
The inclusion of Bournemouth winger Ben Gannon Doak was one of four changes made by Clarke, and he was the player who often produced the excitement with his willingness to take players on.<\/p>\n
Yet it was the trusted midfield combination of John McGinn and Scott McTominay who teed up Adams for the opener, the latter heading the former’s cross into the striker’s path and he finished neatly.<\/p>\n
Torino striker Adams then turned provider after the break as his brilliant chipped pass found Billy Gilmour, whose header across goal hit Volkov and flew into the net.<\/p>\n
From there, victory was a formality against the mostly blunt Belarus attack.<\/p>\n
Denmark’s surprise 3-0 win in Athens means Group C is wide open, with Scotland and the Danes both on four points and Greece one point behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland secured a routine but important 2-0 victory over Belarus to continue their solid start to World Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-129878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}