In the end, it wouldn’t have mattered if Scotland had stuck three or four goals past Haiti in their opening World Cup game, we were still returning on the first plane back to the land modern football forgot.

In the 28 years since we last appeared at the World Cup, the entry requirements had been relaxed sufficiently so that Scotland’s donkey jackets and cheap trainers could now make it past the front door. Once there though, we found that the rest of the world were playing the 4.0 upgrade while we were playing Space Invaders.

The Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Canada and Cabo Verde had moved past Scotland; all of them having mastered that with which Scottish footballers still struggle: the delicate first touch; the threaded forward pass; the use of both feet; take the ball, pass the ball.

You might reasonably chastise Steve Clarke for aspects of his tactical strategy, but this masks a starker truth. Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti would have struggled to get a tune out of a group of players collectively lacking in the new fundamentals that every other country has embraced.

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When Scotland’s fate was officially sealed, our head coach stepped down with a measure of dignity and class. In his seven-year tenure, he’d taken Scotland to three successive major international tournaments. Like Jock Stein and Sir Alex Ferguson and many others besides, he found that Scottish footballers simply cannot function in the thinner atmosphere of international........

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