given up hope<\/a> of his team escaping out of their World Cup group, this particular bunch of Scottish natives clearly had not.<\/p>\nThe Scots, crippled by a deadly combo of profligacy and self destruction, needed snookers. In fact, they needed snookers while playing blind-folded and without a cue ball.<\/p>\n
Even John Higgins, the Wizard of Wishaw, would struggle to get them out of this jam.<\/p>\n
To progress, Clarke’s side need four fellow third-placed teams to finish on three points with a goal difference worse than -3, or with fewer points. <\/p>\n
Until Spain’s victory earlier in the Miami night, every settled group had done the opposite. Now, with Egypt winning, it looked as though the Scots would require two from Saturday’s three unsettled groups to come through for them.<\/p>\n
A monumentally tall order, but not an impossible one, given the punch of the air from the Scots in this bar as Mahmoud Saber turned in Egypt’s opener.<\/p>\n
Nine minutes later, as a man in a Premier League top unsuccessfully attempted to charm a young lady a few feet away at the bar, Iran levelled, puncturing the mood at one particular table.<\/p>\n
The music seemed to get even louder as the game went on and the tension for the group of Scots increased. <\/p>\n
The room swayed and samba-danced to the pulse as the play raged on. In the corner, Lionel Messi was moving almost in slow motion, his arms methodically swinging against an imaginary tide. <\/p>\n
They say rhythm is a dancer. Leo was dancing to his own rhythm here.<\/p>\n
The apocalypse brothers remained unmoved as the game raged into the second half, Egypt retreating further as Mohamed Salah departed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While Scotland head coach Steve Clarke had given up hope of his team escaping out of their World Cup group,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}