FOOTBALL isn’t important. Until it means everything. The magnificent frivolity of sport can signify little in its sound and fury until it suddenly matters. And then all is changed. Utterly.

In an almost deserted stadium in Belgrade on Thursday, a 35-year-old man fell to his left and stuck out his hand. A terrible beauty was born. Or reborn. David Marshall’s penalty save took Scotland to the finals of the European Championships after a 22-year failure by the men’s team to qualify for the latter stages of major finals.

But you know that. It was in all the papers.

But how to make sense of it? How to corral what it means for a country, its national sport, its footballers, its culture, both political and personal?

This is a lot to hang on a fleeting incident in a faraway country. But it stands strong under the burden. The best testimony to its validity is purely personal. I am 65, officially a pensioner. On Thursday, I donned the armour of low expectation, inoculated myself in a time of Covid against all hope. Experience has taught me this is for the best in matters concerning the national team.

There was reason behind my pessimism. Serbia had better players (their £60 million Real Madrid striker could not make the starting XI), Scotland were weak in certain positions, our opponents were serial qualifiers for major tournaments, seriously good.

An occasion of granda daycare meant I could watch the game in the company of my son, with whom I have travelled the world to watch sporting events from Borussia Dortmund in the German cup final in Berlin to Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park. At 8pm, on his return from work and my despatching of his weans to bed, we were sitting in his home with expectations so low they made a snake’s belly resemble the Empire State Building in terms of altitude. Somewhere post 10pm, we were hugging and crying. So subsequently were the two grandweans in the floor above. Their slumbers had been interrupted by expressions of joy.

“Dad, I remember it well,” said my son Alastair, regaining composure. “St Modan’s High. Second year. Mr Quigley comes in with one of those old tellies on a stand with castors and tells us there is no modern studies lesson today. We are going to watch the opening game of the 1998 World Cup. Scotland v Brazil. I had just turned 13. I am 35 now, with a mortgage, two kids. It’s been a long time, dad.’”

THE kilt hangs in a wardrobe upstairs. Darren Jackson, though, carries the memories with him. The pre-match pitch inspection at the Stade de France on June 10, 1998, was undertaken by the Scottish players wearing the national garb. History beckoned. Scotland were about to play Brazil in the opening match of the World Cup. Jackson testifies to the enduring significance of that afternoon when Scotland lost, somewhat unluckily, to a marvellous Brazilian side.

“I was standing in the tunnel, waiting to go out. I was reflecting that I once had played for Meadowbank Thistle, I had worked as a printer. Yet here I was. I looked across and caught the eye of Ronaldo, the greatest player in the world. You don’t forget these things,” he said.

Those sitting in the stands or in front of the television at home do not forget, either. “I am sitting here having a coffee,” said Jackson, on the morning after that night before, “and people are coming up to me asking what I feel about last night’s result. I have been asked what my feelings are about the drought having been broken. I cannot tell you how delighted I am. I want those players to experience what I experienced. I want those boys to feel what I did when I represented my country in the major tournaments.”

Jackson, who was also part of the 1996 European Championships finals squad, knows many of the players well. He was, for example, agent to Leigh Griffiths and Kenny McLean, who took successful penalties against Serbia. He also coached Andy Robertson, the captain, when he was starting his ascent to best full-back in the world from base camp at Dundee United.

“I was gutted when a generation of fine players – Barry Ferguson, Scott Brown, Darren Fletcher, James McFadden and others – did not get the chance to play in finals. That’s what all top players want to experience. I remember the hotels, the training, everything and, yes, I still have the kilt. It’s something on your CV that you recall proudly.

“You watch Scotland overcome everything in Serbia and think: ‘That’s what the big boys do.’ They are going where the big boys go.”

His personal experience of Thursday night is telling. “My son Jacob is 19. He has never been to a major tournament to watch Scotland. Hopefully, we can now go together. This is what it means to people all over the country.”

And to the players? “You look at Ryan Christie in his post-match interview. You don’t need to say anything,” he added.

The Celtic player somehow held back his tears, or most of them, as he commented on the match where he played brilliantly, scoring Scotland’s goal. He and his team mates had restored a sense of joy in the Tartan Army. He had dispelled any doubts about the significance of international football for its participants in an era where players are routinely and erroneously derided as solely concerned with money.

He had become, unwittingly but irrevocably, a touchstone of the significance emotionally of a dreich night in Belgrade. His goal was a sublime moment. His interview bound him to the nation. One cannot swivel on the edge of the box and drill a shot in the manner of a reverse pass into the bottom corner of the net. One can – and did – react powerfully alongside Christie to the growing realisation that there was going to be a football party and we were are all invited.

Sentiment is wonderful but finance is crucial to the national sport, and the efforts of the team on Thursday ensure a lifeline for the Scottish Football Association which is listing badly under the implications of not being in lucrative finals and of playing matches behind closed doors. Earlier this month a projected loss of £4.5m was disclosed and redundancies announced at the association’s headquarters.

“This is hugely significant for the SFA,” said Jackson. “The money from finals is important but it also attracts sponsors and allows money to be given to the grassroots. I would point out, too, that the under-age teams are doing well.”

Indeed, the under-21s travel to Greece this week with qualification for the Uefa Championships almost within their grasp. The women’s team, who of course qualified for last year’s World Cup finals, face two crucial matches in the forthcoming weeks in their bid to qualify for the European finals, too.

“Listen, this has been a difficult year and it’s easy and understandable to focus on the gloom,” said Jackson. “But good things are happening at every level in Scottish football. We must remember that.” And France 98, of course.

THERE are those who will not be there to see Scotland return to playing in finals. “I remember my friend, Jason Gold,” said Gordon Sheach, founder of The Tartan Scarf website that deals, authoritatively but with an amiable obsessiveness, with all matters pertaining to the national team.

Mr Gold died in 2018, before he was 30, from cancer. He was a dedicated foot soldier in the Tartan Army, accompanying Mr Sheach on expeditions, particularly in the campaign to qualify for the 2016 European Championships. His story is tragically personal but it also speaks to a wider truth about how football can bring people together in good times and bad.

“My first thought after last night’s match was of Jason,” said Sheach, still trying to process on Friday morning what precisely had happened in Belgrade and what it signified. His initial and most powerfully enduring thought was that the national team was a unifying force. “We share this together – all of us, whatever club side we support,” he said. “I know the arguments against international football but I say this: no sheikh or oligarch will come along and take over the national team. It belongs to us. You saw what it meant to the players and it is becoming clear today what I means to the rest of us.”

Sheach was nine years old the last time Scotland played in a finals. “It has been a long time coming but it was not only deserved but illustrated the qualities of the modern Scotland player.”

He referenced Lyndon Dykes, the Australian-born striker whose attitude owed nothing to any lingering effects of the Scottish cringe. “He believes in exceptionalism not fatalism,” said Sheach.

“In his first press conference as a Scottish player he spoke about how he wanted to be top scorer, how he believed we would play in finals. He did not shy away from the pressure, he wanted it. I always think of the resemblance to Andy Murray. He arrived at Wimbledon every year with people telling him how long it was since a Brit had won the tournament. But that was not his fault. That had all happened or not happened long before he was about. It’s the same with the Scottish players. They cannot be blamed for the history before their time. They reacted well to the pressure, much better than Serbia did.”

There are two points that consequently seep into culture and politics. He made an observation about each. On the culture of supporting the team, he said: “The Tartan Army are famously welcoming. On tour I’ve met Scotland fans born in England and Germany, fans in turbans and trews – lads, ladies and kids. Wherever Scotland go, trouble never follows. For us, it doesn’t matter where you are from, all that matters is that you’re here.”

He admitted this last sentence could be used as an SNP motto, before noting that the May elections will be held as Scotland build up to return to the elite stage of sport. “It is an intoxicating combination,” he said.

There is evidence, too, that sporting events can impact on political fortune. The ignominious exit of Scotland from the 1978 World Cup – a miserable package of failing against Iran and failing drug tests – impacted negatively in the 1979 referendum on devolution. In the vote, on March 1, Scotland voted in favour of devolution by 52% to 48% – but only 32.9% of the electorate had joined the majority, falling short of the 40% decreed to make the vote binding. Devolution was thus taken off the political agenda, if not for long.

Similarly, in March 1966, Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, took the gamble of declaring a snap general election. He won in a landslide in the bubbling optimism of a forthcoming World Cup to be held in the country. There were political reasons for the victory. Labour was judged strong on the economy and Edward Heath, the Tory leader, was seen as unknown and untested, having taken up the job only a year previously. But Wilson always privately gave a nod to the feelgood factor induced by the greatest show on Earth being held in England and later lamented, not entirely seriously, that he should have held the election after Bobby Moore held the Jules Rimet trophy in triumph after beating West Germany in July.

The most crucial aspect of victory in Belgrade may be how it shifts cultural attitudes. Scotland has cooried into the cringe. There is the mass brace against failure. There is the ubiquitous Trainspotting clip about it being crap (or somesuch) to be Scottish. There is the widely held references to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, of drawing with mountain tops (San Marino, though we eventually won), of losing a late equaliser to England after seeming destined to win June 2017.

All this, and more, has produced the self-destructive contempt of “How Scotland” and the destructive tyranny of the “what if”. Serbia score an equaliser with 150 seconds remaining. How Scotland, the naysayers lament. But Scotland regroup, endure and win. How Scotland is that fir ye?

And what now of the what-ifs? What if Stuart Amstrong had simply booted the ball clear? What if we had not been exploited by a parcel of rogues? What if we had realised, like Norway, that it was our oil and it could have benefited generations still to come? What if we simply had been better at the game we have with the world? What if we could just be a grown-up nation and make decisions for ourselves, beyond who to play at right-back and where to dive in a shoot-out?

There is now a different, fresh, even invigorating what-if. What if Scotland’s new generation of players (captain Robertson was four when the national team last qualified for a major tournament) welcome pressure and feel able to deal with it? What if Scotland’s unique selling point as a national team is that it has never missed a penalty in a shoot-out? What if the gallus, gentle swaggering demeanour of our top-class players is but a mirror on how young Scots perceive themselves? What if the nation believes in the potential of the future rather than being burdened by the weight of the past?

What if the question of what if is one of hope, even expectancy, of a nod to opportunity rather than a collapse in the face of paralysing apprehension?

What if, Scotland? The players gave their answer on Thursday. The rest of us must wait until May.