Portugal is set to host Scotland in their UEFA Nations League A Group 1 fixture, as Cristiano Ronaldo's side eye consecutive wins in the ongoing competition. The inaugural UEFA Nations League winners have failed to qualify for the Final of the event since 2019, and with a win tonight against Scotland, they will all but ensure their qualification into the quarter finals.
Scotland will look to bounce back from their opening fixture heartbreak when they travel to Lisbon to take on Portugal on Sunday night.
After going in two goals at half time, Scotland valiantly fought back to level terms in front of a packed Hampden Park. They pulled one back first through Billy Gilmour’s second-ever international goal before Scott McTominay’s tenth goal for his country brough them level on night, only for a 97th-minute penalty to cruelly deny them a point.
Steve Clarke will now take his side to go head-to-head with Portugal, winners of the first ever UEFA Nations League competition in 2019, looking to put their first points on the board in the top tier of the competition.
Previous Meetings
The two nations have met on 15 occasions over the past eight decades, Portugal enjoying the advantage over the course with eight victories to Scotland’s four, the two sides drawing three times in that period.
The first meeting between the nations way back in 1950 ended in a 2-2 draw in front of 68,000 fans in Lisbon, with goals from Willie Bauld and Allan Brown for the visitors.
The most recent meeting ended in a 3-1 victory for Portugal at Hampden in 2018. A Scotland side that had Andy Robertson, Scott McKenna and John McGinn in the starting 11 went down 3-1 on the night, Steven Naismith getting on the scoresheet late on for the hosts.
Portugal have dominated the most recent meetings between the sides, Scotland needing to go back to 1980 for their last victory. The Scots won emphatically on that occasion, however, goals from Kenny Dalglish, Andy Gray, Steve Archibald and Archie Gemmill securing a 4-1 victory.
Indeed, Scotland will need to make history tomorrow night if they are to emerge with a win, having never won on Portuguese soil in their seven previous visits.
Team News
Steve Clarke has no fresh injury concerns within the squad after Thursday night’s match, with all 23 players in the squad having travelled to Portugal.
Ben Doak and Ryan Gauld will be hoping to feature again having each made their Scotland debut on Thursday night, leaving Jon McCracken, Josh Doig and Max Johnston as the only uncapped players in the squad.
Pre-Match Thoughts
Scotland midfielder Ryan Christie: “We’ll probably have to be at our very best across the full park, all 11 players. We obviously know it's going to take 90 minutes of pure concentration across the pitch.
“We know how good a team they are, especially offensively. We came out in the second-half the other night and put in such a positive performance, you almost come away from the game thinking how you lose it? I thought we looked positive again and we've had positive results against big teams in the past.”
Where to watch
The game will be shown live on ITV4 and ITVX from 7.30pm.
A History of Heartbreak
Pat Nevin and Scotland lost heavily in Lisbon in 1993
“A team died out there tonight.”
It is one of Scottish football’s legendary quotes, uttered by Andy Roxburgh on an ignominious night for the national team during the 1994 World Cup qualifiers.
Roxburgh’s side were thrashed 5-0 by Portugal in Lisbon in April 1993 - the same city where Steve Clarke prepares to take his out-of-form and injury-ravaged team on Nations League duty on Sunday. It’ll be Scotland's first trip to the Portuguese capital since that fateful date.
Roxburgh's tactics and team selection were criticised in the wake of the match.
Brian McClair had been in outstanding form for Manchester Utd at the time but was an unused substitute. Jim McInally and Stuart McCall got in each other’s way at the heart of midfield, with the former out of the Dundee United team at the time.
There was also the fall-out with Richard Gough, whose international career ended that evening, while his Rangers club-mate, Ally McCoist, broke a leg and the then Scotland boss refusing to leave his post.
He would be gone less than six months later.
It was a sobering night for the Tartan Army, who had been used to reaching World Cups having participated at each of the previous five editions of the tournament. Given Scotland have only reached one World Cup in the subsequent three decades shows how spoiled they were in the good old days.
Roxburgh felt it was a freakish night and scoreline in the old Estadio da Luz. Given the current form of the current side, it may have to be a freakish night for Scotland to be able to produce what would have to go down as one of their greatest ever victories should they be able to turn things around at this particular juncture and in the stadium that replaced the one in which the 1993 team were humbled.
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Wins on the road have been pretty hard to come by relatively for Scotland, but doing so against top-tier sides does not come around particularly often.
While Clarke can point to superb victories in Oslo and Vienna during his tenure, you have to go back to June 2013 to find a win over one of the sides in the current top 20.
That was a brilliant win in Zagreb against Croatia early in the Gordon Strachan chapter, with Robert Snodgrass scoring the only goal.
However, that came after the 2014 World Cup horse had bolted, which means you are really looking at the famous win in Paris in 2007 to find a victory that truly counted against one of these giants.
A Tall Order For Scotland
A win in Lisbon would be in the same category as that celebrated triumph in the Parc des Princes, which underlines the size of the task facing Clarke and his beleaguered players.
However, this is League A of the Nations League and, if Scotland want to extend their stay at this level, Thursday's 3-2 defeat by Poland already has them scrambling around looking for something in this one.
Ronaldo vs Scotland
Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 900th career goal in Portugal's win over Croatia
Like the Poles and Robert Lewandowski, Portugal's main man is still around.
At the age of 39, Cristiano Ronaldo may finally face Scotland for the first time. He scored his 900th career goal in their 2-1 win over Croatia on Thursday and, while he had a disappointing Euro 2024, the forward's roll of honour is spectacular.
Five Champions League titles, multiple league titles in England, Spain and Italy, 11 major international tournament appearances, five Ballon d’Ors alongside the Euro 2016 and Nations League titles with his country.
Ronaldo is a machine and, if he plays against Scotland, it will be his 214th cap. No man has amassed anywhere near that tally and perhaps never will.
He has played in a few generations of Portuguese talent - from Luis Figo and Rui Costa at the beginning to Bernardo Silva and Bruno Fernandes in the present day.
The midfielders who play on both sides of the Manchester divide are crucial to what Portugal do.
In truth, they should probably have amassed more than the two titles that they have collected in the past eight years across the previous these two decades.
Roberto Martinez, who crossed swords with Clarke during his time in charge of Belgium, once again has an embarrassment of riches from which to select, with his team emerging from a keenly contested battle with Croatia on match-day one.
Current undisputed number one Diogo Costa of Porto became the first goalkeeper at a European Championship to save each penalty he faced when he did so in their last-16 win over Slovenia in Germany.
Silva's Manchester City team-mate, Ruben Dias, is regarded as one of the best defenders in world football, with Paris Saint Germain left-back Nuno Mendes having fully recovered from an injury-ravaged season to star at the finals while club-mate Vitinha is another who has emerged over the past three or four years.
Chelsea's Pedro Neto and AC Milan's Rafael Leao supplemented Ronaldo against the Croats and have incredible speed, which will cause its own problems for a Scotland defence that has leaked 31 goals in 13 games of this miserable run.
His side having lost the most winnable game of this group against Poland at home, Clarke now faces up to the most difficult fixture in this campaign and desperate to avoid some of the individual mistakes that have been regularly punished in the past year.
Life in Nations League A can be unforgiving as life in Lisbon has been previously for the Scots.
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