Scotland at the World Cup 1998
Kirsty Wark and guests look back on the Scotland football team's World Cup of 1998 when they famously took on Brazil in the tournament's opening match.
Scotland can boast of having one of the oldest football cultures in the world. The Scottish Football Association was founded in 1873 and is the second oldest in the world.
The men鈥檚 national football team has qualified for the FIFA World Cup eight times, but Scotland have never managed to progress beyond the group stage of the tournament. Avoiding being knocked out at the first hurdle was certainly the plan in France in 1998 when Scotland last took part in a World Cup.
The road to qualification hadn鈥檛 been smooth. It wasn鈥檛 helped by Scotland facing a crucial qualifying match against Belarus the same day as the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales.
At the tournament itself, 60,000 members of the Tartan Army were estimated to have descended on Paris and Scotland was given the honour of opening the tournament on 10th June 1998 with a match against their regular foes, Brazil.
Joining Kirsty Wark are 1998 squad members and midfielders Paul Lambert and Craig Burley, Andy Mitchell of the Scottish Football Association, 麻豆社 Scotland鈥檚 main sports presenter Dougie Donnelly, match commentator Rob Maclean and reporter Rhona McLeod, and from the Tartan Army supporters club John and Marion Daly.
Producer: Howard Shannon
Editor: David Prest
A Whistledown production for 麻豆社 Radio 4
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- Sun 5 Apr 2026 10:00麻豆社 Radio 4
- Fri 10 Apr 2026 09:00麻豆社 Radio 4
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