{"id":5982,"date":"2026-06-28T01:30:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T01:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5982"},"modified":"2026-06-28T01:30:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T01:30:22","slug":"scotland-out-of-world-cup-2026-steve-clarkes-side-eliminated-in-group-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5982","title":{"rendered":"Scotland out of World Cup 2026: Steve Clarke’s side eliminated in group stage"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Scotland, who have played at each of the past two European Championships, booked their spot at a World Cup for the first time since 1998 in dramatic fashion with an unforgettable victory against Denmark<\/a> at Hampden Park in November.<\/p>\n

Backed by tens of thousands of fans who had travelled to the United States, John McGinn’s deflected strike against Haiti earned the country’s first win at a World Cup for 36 years.<\/p>\n

That would be Scotland’s only goal of the tournament.<\/p>\n

They lost to a second-minute strike by 2022 semi-finalists Morocco in their second match, so they entered their final group game against Brazil knowing a draw would probably be enough to send them through as one of the best third-placed teams.<\/p>\n

However, first-half defensive errors would prove their undoing.<\/p>\n

They once again conceded early when defender Scott McKenna was robbed of possession inside his own penalty area, gifting an opener to Vinicius Jr.<\/p>\n

The Real Madrid forward was denied a second when the video assistant referee (VAR) deemed he had fouled Jack Hendry before rolling the ball past Angus Gunn, but just before half-time Scotland again gave the ball away near their own goal and Vinicius Jr nodded in at the back post to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n

Matheus Cunha extended Brazil’s advantage after half-time and a late rally failed to yield a reply that would have improved Scotland’s goal difference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scotland, who have played at each of the past two European Championships, booked their spot at a World Cup for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5982","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\/5982","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=5982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}