The Replay: Scotland 0 Denmark 1, 1986 World Cup

Or, Return To Nezahualcoyotl

Before Scotland begin their quest for a place at the World Cup in Canada, the United States and Mexico, Nutmeg dusted off the VHS of the Group E game between these two nations that began their World Cup ’86 campaign.

Before we get to that, full disclosure: the format of this post – the whole idea, really – is stolen from the great Shea Serrano, whose Substack GOOD MOVIE does exactly the same thing, but with… good movies. We recommend Shea’s work without reservation and beg his forgiveness for this act of theft.

And another thing, it wasn’t a VHS tape, it was streamed for free on FIFA+. Say what you like about Gianni Infantino’s courtship of autocrats, the man knows how to handle his legacy content.

The Warm-Up

The last time I watched this game I was 11 years old and unfamiliar with the notion of a World Cup in which Scotland was not a participant. Let’s reacquaint ourselves with those heady times before kick-off.

Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico. June 4, 1986. Scotland have qualified for their fourth consecutive World Cup, but the price has been steep: we lost a colossus. Jock Stein began the qualification campaign at the helm, but after his death following a pulmonary edema suffered at the end of a game in Wales, Alex Ferguson, the manager of Aberdeen who had been assisting his mentor with the national team, took charge, both for a playoff against Australia and then into the World Cup finals.

As with each instalment of Scotland’s great run of World Cups, the squad was deep and strong. Liverpool had just won the double and from Anfield came Steve Nicol. From Manchester United – the club who would appoint Ferguson as their manager later that same year – came Gordon Strachan, his former charge. Ferguson had just won the last of 10 major trophies at Pittodrie, the 1986 Scottish Cup, and his goalkeeper and both centre-backs started this game: Jim Leighton, Willie Miller and Alex McLeish. Next to Souness in central midfield was the sole Old Firm representative, Roy Aitken, who had just captained Celtic to the title. Graeme Souness would start the following season as player-manager on the other side of Glasgow. Frank McAvennie began on the bench despite a season in which he had scored 26 goals as West Ham finished third in England’s top flight.

Denmark had no lack of talent themselves. This was their first World Cup, but their team had not changed much from that which reached the semi-finals of the 1984 European Championships, pushing Spain to a penalty shootout. Their stars were Soren Lerby, a double winner that year with Bayern Munich; Michael Laudrup, Serie A champion with Juventus at the start of a career that would become indelible, and Preben Elkjaer, who had won the Italian title the year before Laudrup, spearheading the only league win in the history of Hellas Verona, and had finished second in the 1985 Ballon d’Or voting (having finished third the year before).

The match was played at the Estadio Neza 86 at an elevation of 2,220m, kick off 4pm local time. Not normal situations for these North Atlantic cousins.

Scotland wore the Umbro 1986 home kit, don’t act like you don’t know the one. It’s a work of art. Denmark wore Hummel, the half-and-half kit, pin-stripes and chevrons, that would become the signature of this ‘Danish Dynamite’ era – only for this game, FIFA would not let them wear the half-and-half shorts. Something to do with the earth’s gravitational pull not being able to withstand the gamma oscillations.

Your referee is Lajos Nemeth from Hungary and also, it would seem, the Victorian age. The football he places on the centre circle is unmistakably an Adidas Tango. Let’s go.

The First Half

1.00 – Scotland have the ball for the first time. Well, that’s not quite true. Aitken did plant one on Elkjaer in the middle of this spell, but the ball went straight back to a Hummel-clad Dane. This worrying opening only ends when Miller and Elkjaer chase a ball down the inside-left channel. Miller closes the door on the big man, the ball rolls beyond the line. OK, take a breath.

1.55 – This is like the scene in the action movie when the hero meets the bad guy in Act One and they test each other out. It’s not the big confrontation, but they get a good sniff at each other. Laudrup drags the ball into the box from the left and is confronted by Miller, the man Ferguson described as “the best penalty box defender in the world”. Miller is intense in these moments, lining his body up with Laudrup, moving his feet in small, jittery steps, retreating, assessing and, eventually, persuading the 21-year-old that this is not the fight he wants. Laudrup squares the ball across the box and Klaus Berggreen shoots over, before he is incorrectly identified by the television producer as Eamonn Bannon. Bannon is not even on the pitch at the time and is the one Scotland squad member who looks the least like Berggreen, who could legitimately be a bassist for a sub-par Euro metal band.

2.32 – A first look at the Danish fans, and it’s disappointing. They are all seated, they all seem quite elderly and, if I had to guess, sober. They could be waiting outside a town hall at dawn for the bus that will take them on a budget holiday to the Isle of Wight.

4.42 – Charlie Nicholas can play a bit. He gets the ball in the centre circle, spins Lerby, nutmegs Jens Jorn Bertelsen and then sprays it out to Nicol, on the left. Nicol’s deep cross is headed back by Richard Gough and there’s Charlie again, chest-controlling to take one defender out of the game and then, just as he pulls the trigger, another red shirt slides in and just takes the sting out of it, enabling Troels Rasmussen to block. It would have been a great goal, but it was a big chance. Nicholas looks back at the goal as he jogs away, wondering what might have been.

10.42 – The first nailed-on 2025 yellow card challenge comes in. It’s Miller through the back of Elkjaer as he is receiving the ball with his back to goal. Play on. No card, no foul, no problem.

11.37 – Nicol launches a ball down the left to… Ivan Nielsen? There’s no Scotland player in sight, it must have been a… wait! There’s Paul Sturrock, so small that he was literally invisible to the television camera, obscured in totality by Nielsen until he emerges from his shadow to win a corner. The Tartan Army start up ‘Here We Go’, swaying behind banners that read ‘Hello Willy’ and ‘Fit Like, Cath’.

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14.50 – Sturrock has some wheels. He burns off Nielsen, a Euro 84 veteran and a starter for Feyenoord, who bundles him over on the left of the box. Gough heads the free-kick over.

20.05 – A proper reducer. A loose ball bouncing between Aitken and Elkjaer has red lights and a siren on it. One can only imagine the self-defence Elkjaer has learned in Serie A during the mid-1980s and it all comes out here. He goes over the ball onto Aitken’s ankle and at the same time charges him with his shoulder. Scotland didn’t exactly bring a knife to a gun fight here, Aitken knows how to boogie, but he literally bounces of Big Preb before collapsing to the ground. Scots surround our man from Hungary, with both Miller and McLeish miming the studs-up action that felled their pal. Souness can’t bring himself to push too hard here, perhaps aware of the sheer hypocrisy involved in such a prosecution.

20.50 – This sparks a flurry of violence… visited upon Jesper Olsen. First Strachan elbows his Manchester United teammate in the chest as he gets up having been fouled himself by Berggreen, then Souness elbows Olsen in the head during a 50-50. Well, as much of a 50-50 as is possible between Magnum PI’s fight double and the fourth member of A-Ha.

31.18 – What are the Danish fans up to here? They run a weird, synchronised swaying routine, with each tier moving in the opposite direction to the ones above and below them. It’s disconcerting and I think I may have under-estimated them.

31.50 – Rasmussen, the keeper, loses control of the ball on the edge of his box and grabs at it as it crosses the line. Schoolboy stuff. Scotland have a free-kick on the edge. It goes Nicholas to Strachan to change the angle, then Souness with a shot that misses badly. Souness takes everything: long throws, free-kicks from deep and wide and offensive free-kicks. Who’s going to tell him ‘no’?

36.37 – Great chance. Strachan finds space in the middle and threads a beauty of a pass as Gough makes a run behind Olsen. Rasmussen comes out, Gough touches it on to his left, going across goal, but shoots over, under pressure. The replay – from behind the goal, a giant, flashing ‘R’ in the corner – shows that any kind of controlled contact on the shot would have given Scotland the lead.

37.48 – Our best look so far at the Tartan Army. The Umbro kit is ubiquitous, and only one of them is the yellow away. Some have gone taps aff, many have some form of sun-protective headwear, from sombreros, to baseball caps, to bunnets and there are lions rampant all over the shop. Magic.

42.07 – Sturrock wins another corner, lining up Nielsen and skinning him down the left. When the half-time whistle sounds, two things are clear: Scotland have had the best of it and you’d take Paul Sturrock in your team over Michael Laudrup any day.

The Second Half

46.35 – Souness wins the ball three times within a six-second spell, setting a record that stands to this day.

49.32 – We may have gone in a bit early on this Laudrup fellow. He glides down the right, plays a sweet ball inside Maurice Malpas and Elkjaer’s touch takes him round Leighton but too wide – he shoots into the side netting.

53.45 – Two great tackles by Miller in quick succession. The first takes all of the ball and most of Laudrup as he scuttles down the left. Then, when Laudrup finds Elkjaer, Miller sees his chance to smash the Danes’ danger man, who stays down, looking miserable. Laudrup seems to have a free role since half-time, he’s everywhere. I don’t like it.

57.23 – And now this. Laudrup is in his own half, so nobody bothers too much about him. Then he finds Frank Arnesen, right between Miller and McLeish. Big Eck is drawn to Arnesen, Miller looks for Elkjaer, and just in time – the big man is darting forward and Arnesen finds him. Big Preb squares Miller up, but the Aberdeen man, even at 2,220 feet and in the blistering Aztec sun, is dialed in, on his toes, eyes only for the ball. Elkjaer drags the ball left, Miller swings and connects with it… but it bounces off Elkjaer’s shin, towards goal. Miller is now flat-footed, Big Preb marches forward and as Leighton advances from goal, he bounces a shot across goal and in off the post.

Scotland 0 Denmark 1

60.45 – That’s so 1986! Laudrup breaks forward, Souness gets as close as he needs to and, with the ball in another postcode, swings his right boot through both of Laudrup’s legs. Mr Nemeth literally wags his finger at Scotland’s captain. What does a guy have to do to get a yellow round here?

63.59 – Finally! The first shot of Ferguson. He is in the safety of the shaded dug-out, quite youthful, the only encroaching grey in the sideburns and temple. Next to him, the Silver Fox, Walter Smith.

65.15 – And, for Denmark… Sepp Piontek, a German. Piontek played his whole career with Werder Bremen, who he also managed for four years. His legacy would be the 11 years he spent in charge of the blossoming Denmark team, from 1979 to 1990. I don’t know who the guy next to him is but I like his style. He has those too-big, smoke-tinted spectacles that only existed in the 1980s and he’s dragging on a pipe only slightly smaller than that of Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds.

67.50 – Goal*, Scotland. After a set piece is cleared, Miller finds himself on the right wing, swinging a ball to the back stick as the Danes attempt a charging offside trap. As the ball lands on Aitken’s thigh, he does look very offside. The flag is raised just as he shoots into the bottom-left corner. But when the flashing ‘R’ appears in the corner of the screen, it isn’t even close. Arnesen, right in front of the linesman, is playing everyone on. This is the pivotal moment in the game, in the tournaments of both Scotland and Denmark, in the history of modern football and in the future as it would come to pass.

*not a goal

71.44 – Strachan’s deflected cross from the right dips weirdly at the near post of Rasmussen, who falls on it just in time. McAvennie, on for Sturrock, attempts to give it enough momentum to cross the line by kicking Rasmussen in the balls. This attempt is unsuccessful.

74.15 – Charlie Nicholas can play. He skins three Danes in the box and as more are drawn to him, he rolls it to his captain, lurking on the edge of the box. You could fill a YouTube playlist with goals scored by Souness from this exact position throughout his career, but this time he drags it wide. There is an equation in football whereby the quality of a chance, multiplied by the importance of the moment, is reflected in the reaction of the protagonists. Both Scots look physically injured by what just happened.

76.42 – Olsen outruns Aitken but dribbles it out for a goal kick. As McLeish and Leighton rush to get the ball, Olsen kicks it away. Big Eck clotheslines Wee Jesper against the advertising boards, WWE style. Under Royal Rumble rules, had Olsen been knocked over the Camel Cigarettes sign, he would have been eliminated from the World Cup.

79.17 – The foul of the game. Lerby avoids a two-footer from Miller and is feeling quite good about it, only to be cleaned out by Aitken, who sprints over to send him spinning through the air with a mighty swing of his right foot. Perfectly executed and appreciated by Lerby, who gets up, shakes Aitken’s hand and smiles broadly. The referee’s hand could not be further from his pocket.

84.17 – Yellow! There is a threshold for a booking and apparently it is kicking Charlie Nicholas out of the World Cup. Charlie finds the energy to streak away from Berggreen and toward the box, but the Dane slides after him, studding him down the back of his leg. Nicholas is down for a while – they call a stretcher onto the pitch but he makes it off with the help of the trainers. Four minutes later – after McAvennie improvises an overhead kick from a long Souness throw that lands two feet wide – Charlie is still on his way round the pitch, now being carried by two members of the Scotland staff. He won’t be stripped for the next game and will be on the bench for the final group fixture, against Uruguay.

91.32 – The game finishes with Elkjaer keeping the ball in the corner and the camera finding a new pocket of Danish fans, entirely in full-length candy stripes, like a gaggle of Where’s Wally fetishists.

The Aftermath

Scotland took the lead, but lost the game against West Germany, and then could not find a way to unlock Uruguay after they lost a man to the World Cup’s fastest red card. We were the only team not to make it out of Group E.

Denmark won each of their group games. Elkjaer scored a hat-trick against Uruguay and he and Laudrup were among the stars of the tournament, despite the Danes’ run being ended by four goals from Emilio Butragueno in a 5-1 drubbing by Spain in the round of 16.

Scotland had one more World Cup in them before the talent pool got thinner and our luck ran out. It’s been a long wait. Maybe this time?