{"id":124711,"date":"2025-09-09T08:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/124711\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T08:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:15:08","slug":"scotland-world-cup-qualification-drama-to-come-but-momentum-built","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/124711\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland World Cup qualification: Drama to come but momentum built"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scotland fans with even average memories take nothing for granted on the road, their mind&#8217;s eye still capable of conjuring up disturbing images of losing qualifying matches to Georgia in Tbilisi in 2007 and Kazakhstan in Astana a dozen years later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Zalaegerszeg in western Hungary does not get to join the hall of infamy, not after Scotland won a fairly joyless, but wholly professional, behind-closed-doors contest against Belarus. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201dGet in and get out with three points\u201c was the mission, and the mission was accomplished. Quality was optional on this occasion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There was not much of it, but for now it does not matter. There was an encouraging performance from Ben Gannon-Doak, operating on the left wing with Andy Robertson as his minder. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There was a solid outing from Che Adams, who scored the first and was involved in the second. There was another clean sheet and the feeling of a job done adequately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The drama on the night did not come in Hungary, it came in Greece, where Denmark hauled themselves off the floor after dropping two home points against Scotland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In taking the previously thrusting Greeks to the cleaners &#8211; 3-0 going on two or three more &#8211; they shook up the group. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After being thoroughly outclassed by Denmark, a team that Scotland kept goalless a few days ago, Steve Clarke has a right to think that Greece are maybe not as good as they were made to look at Hampden in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland fans with even average memories take nothing for granted on the road, their mind&#8217;s eye still capable&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-124711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}