The forgotten night that became a prelude to Scotland's international resurgence

It would be easy to assume that there's an element of blind luck tied to success in international football.

The idea that, every once in a while, an awful lot of brilliantly talented future players happen to be born at roughly the same time, give or take a few years, and qualification for major tournaments inevitably follows. It's a scenario that is particularly applicable to Scotland and our still very recent run of being absent from the big stage for two decades.

How we longed for an overdue golden generation when we were floundering around in the Faroes and being scudded by Kazakhstan. Stuck in those trenches, our past selves would surely have screamed 'get a grip' at anyone caught killing the Euro 2024 buzz by bickering over who Steve Clarke should have picked as third-choice goalkeeper last week.

We shouldn't take occasions like the looming curtain-raiser against Germany in Munich for granted, nor should we assume that they're merely the result of the gene pool deciding it was our turn to be good again. It might throw up the raw talent, but occasions like Friday are the culmination of years of groundwork being laid at all levels of the game.

Andy Robertson. Kieran Tierney, Callum McGregor, John McGinn, Scott McTominay, and the rest - Malky Mackay was well-placed to see this special group emerging over the horizon on their way to becoming the Scotland side we see today. The former Scottish FA performance director took caretaker charge of the team for one game against the Netherlands in November 2017, as his bosses conducted their search for Gordon Strachan's successor, a few short months after that agonising qualification near miss for the 2018 World Cup.

A Mackay-led Scotland lost 1-0 on the night, but debuts were handed to McGregor, Ryan Christie, and Ryan Jack, while there were was a second cap for McGinn, and Tierney wore the captain's armband. It was a largely low-key affair at Pittodrie, but it became a small snapshot of how Scotland would look moving forward. It was also, Mackay insists, a sign that the tireless labour across club academies and international youth setups to produce better players was paying off.

"I did a report for the Scottish FA board afterwards," explained Mackay. "And I told them if your next manager keeps this young group of players together, they will grow and start to beat mid-ranking European teams. And they did. John McGinn was playing his second game. McGregor, Christie, Fraser, Jack, Tierney, Robertson – a real good group of young players that could grow together.

“In comes Steve – a fantastic, experienced manager – and he’s gone and done that. They’ve gradually started to beat these teams. I’m delighted for the young players that have come through the 19s and 21s – Greg Taylor, Nathan Patterson, Aaron Hickey, Lewis Ferguson, Billy Gilmour. That was the group coming through behind them, and then you had Ben Doak coming through behind them.

“It's a lot of hard work from coaches at football clubs, but also the structure in place with the national youth teams has meant that transition into the A-squad there is more strength in depth than there used to be."

Those emerging talents have since been bolstered by the fruits of an effort to tap into opportunities south of the border. Mackay says there was an increased focus during that time on chasing those 'English diamonds' who, in Scott McTominay's case, had always harboured Scottish ambitions, and the eligible few who were not going to make a career with the Three Lions. McTominay was the first to commit, and has since been followed by the likes of Angus Gunn and Che Adams.

“At the time we were trying to hunt down those English diamonds," said Mackay. "There were a couple we went for, because we talked about a recruitment process to give the manager a broader pool of players.

“We’ve got 50 million people 90 miles from us, and a lot of them have Scottish parentage. We said: ‘Let’s go and aggressively hunt down the Scottish ancestry.’

“I spoke to Angus Gunn’s dad, spoke to Che Adams and his parents, spoke to Harvey Barnes and his parents about coming. And we spoke to young Scott McTominay as well.

“At that point, they’re still young enough to think they could make that jump to the English national team. So, sometimes it’s a patience game, you be respectful and say: ‘No problem, if that changes we’ll look and see if anything happens’.  Three of them [Gunn, Adams, McTominay] have come across and will hopefully play a big part at the Euros."

Mackay, now in position as new sporting director at Hibernian, was speaking at a book launch celebrating the life and career of his father, Malky Mackay Snr. The book, titled 'What Am Sayin' To You Is', was co-authored by brothers Davy and Alan Stewart, and the event welcomed Mackay Snr and his family to Queen's Park City Stadium earlier this week, as well as guests such as Billy Stark, Alan Irvine, and Jim McInally.

“The gentleman that pushed the MBE, when he phoned to say he was going to write a book on dad for his posterity, 60 odd years at the club in a voluntary basis, I gave him all the different numbers I had for people that wanted to be involved, Sir Alex Ferguson had a lovely foreword to it," said Mackay. "The people in the room are the people that have meant a lot to him. This club is everything to him. He is obsessed with football and helping youngsters and has never taken a penny for it. He brought me here when I was eight or nine and I was here to 21. It’s the reason I am a footballer, as is Eddie Hunter who is cut from an individual mould.”