The last act of possibly the most exhilarating night in the history of the national team fell to McLean. When the ball came to him in his own half he took it for a little spin, unsure of what to do with it.

“I didn’t initially think about the shot,” he says. “I take a few touches and see support arriving either side and I’m aware the game’s going to finish, whether I pass it or not.

“I was looking around to see if I had any pressure on me, to see if I had time. And I heard some noise from the crowd that sounded like ‘shoot!’. It was the crowd that first put the idea in my head. And, obviously, I took them up on the offer.

“I hit it and it felt like slow motion after that. It felt like everybody went quiet. The ball started half a yard outside the post, but then it started turning. The goalie was in a bit of trouble. It cleared him and it was inside the post. It bounced and went in and that’s when I started running.

“It was bedlam after that. Absolute chaos. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.”

Ferguson recalls the moment the ball found the target. “The relief and euphoria that goes through you – the place erupted, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I had nothing left in the tank but then we all just sprinted about 100 yards into the corner chasing after Kenny. Pure adrenaline. It was like a dream.”

The party carried on and on, everybody with a story to tell, everybody euphoric that the older members of the squad would now have their crowning glory of playing in a World Cup.

All going well, Craig Gordon, at 43, will become the second oldest player in history to appear on the biggest stage.

He’s been on the road as a Scotland player for a staggering 22 years. Hanley won his first cap 15 years ago. Robertson made his debut a dozen years ago. For McGinn and McLean, it’s been a decade.

For Clarke, it’s been a whole lot longer. He’s never made any secret of his dream of leading Scotland to a World Cup and with this group of players he’s now done it.

As the celebrations roared on, Naismith had cause to remember how it was in his day as a Scotland player – 51 caps over 12 years. He speaks about the bond between the current squad and how times have changed.

“The boys now can’t wait to meet up,” he says. “We lacked that in my career, that togetherness. There was a bit of self-interest, I think. If a player didn’t start the first game in a campaign and you were going away to, say, Macedonia in the midweek – ‘oh, I’m injured, I’m not going’. There was too much of that. Not now.”

The final words to McLean, mayor of Norwich and now King of Scotland.

“Every player says it – and a lot of the time it’s said for the sake of it – but we really are like a club side, we’re like a family. Honestly, the connection between these boys is like nothing I’ve ever been involved in. No cliques. Everybody as one.

“If you can be a good team-mate then it goes a long way. That’s what I’d always want people to say about me and I’d say it about all of those boys. They have fantastic ability but above all they’re brilliant team-mates and brilliant people.”

Chelsea have become the football club that know the price of everything but the value of nothing, and it is why the team is drifting toward a failure to qualify for the Champions League under a head coach who is not ready for the job.

Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Everton left Liam Rosenior’s team a point behind fifth-placed Liverpool in the race for the final Champions League qualification spot — the Premier League is virtually certain to claim that extra spot due its position at the top of UEFA’s coefficient table — but it was not an isolated setback for the FIFA Club World Cup winners.

It was Chelsea’s fourth successive defeat in all competitions and their third in a row without scoring; during that run they also suffered an 8-2 Champions League round of 16 hammering at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain.

Under Rosenior, who left Chelsea’s sister club Strasbourg in January to replace the sacked Enzo Maresca, the team have won just three of its past 12 games, but that unimpressive run of results has somewhat slipped under the radar thanks to a variety of other distractions at Stamford Bridge.

There has been a Premier League-record fine of £10.75 million and suspended transfer ban as a sanction for illicit payments made during Roman Abramovich’s ownership of the club, and there have also been Rosenior’s clumsy, sometimes bewildering, comments and actions.

His decision to hand winger Alejandro Garnacho a tactical note while Chelsea had just five minutes to overturn their six-goal deficit in the second-leg against PSG and the defense of his players’ decision to encircle the ball — as well as referee Paul Tierney — prior to kickoff in the 1-0 home defeat against Newcastle United because they wanted to “respect the ball.”

When there are so many distractions and diversions off the pitch, it can be easy to forget what is happening on it. Right now, Chelsea are performing like an imbalanced and inexperienced team, guided in the inimitable way by the overpromoted and ill-equipped Rosenior.

But while Rosenior, who was given a six-year contract when he replaced Maresca, is beginning to feel the heat from the club’s unhappy supporters, it would be wrong to pin the blame for Chelsea’s problems on him.

play

Laurens: Chelsea’s punishment for rule breaches wasn’t enough

Gab & Juls discuss Chelsea’s suspended one-year transfer ban and fine of £10.75 million for historical breaches of Premier League rules.

Rosenior, 41, is simply a symptom of Chelsea dysfunctionality rather than a cause of it, and his presence in the dugout is rooted in the philosophy of the club’s owners, Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly’s BlueCo, who have chosen a path of big spending on some aspects of the team and financial corner-cutting on others.

The team is overloaded with overrated forwards, often signed for bloated transfer fees, while key areas such as goalkeeper — and head coach — are neglected in favor of low-budget options.

Take last summer’s recruitment of Jamie Gittens, Borussia Dortmund‘s 21-year-old winger, for a £48.5 million transfer fee. Two months later, Chelsea added Manchester United‘s Alejandro Garnacho to their squad in a £40 million deal, while earlier that summer, Estêvão, 18, arrived from Palmeiras for an initial £29 million.

All three are young players with potential, and Chelsea can’t operate without wingers, but during the same summer, the club pursued AC Milan goalkeeper Mike Maignan — a proven and experienced No. 1 — yet opted against doing a deal because they regarded the £21 million transfer fee as excessive.

That decision meant that Chelsea went into this season with Robert Sánchez and Filip Jørgensen competing for the goalkeeper position, but neither are good enough and both have made high-profile mistakes in recent weeks. Rosenior dropped Sanchez in favor of Jorgensen in the first-leg against PSG, and the Denmark international made two mistakes leading to goals. Yet at Everton at the weekend, Sanchez was back in goal and he made a mistake leading to a goal, too.

So the club that has spent almost £2 billion on signing players since Clearlake-BlueCo bought Abramovich’s stake in May 2022 still don’t have a competent goalkeeper. But at least they have plenty of wingers.

As a consequence of the recruitment decisions taken before he arrived at the club, Rosenior is having to work with a weak hand, although he still has some outstanding players — Cole Palmer, Moisés Caicedo, João Pedro — at his disposal. Yet Rosenior’s appointment is another example of Chelsea not realizing the value of experience and that, sometimes, proven quality matters.

Rosenior is regarded within the game as a bright and intelligent young coach; England and United legend Wayne Rooney is on record saying how impressed he was with him when Rosenior was his assistant at Derby County. Rosenior was also harshly dismissed by Hull City in May 2024 after missing out on the EFL Championship playoffs by one position, a year after the club finished in the bottom half of the table.

But despite his reputation as a coach with promise, the leap from Strasbourg to Chelsea was far too big, and the football hierarchy at Stamford Bridge has given him a role that he is nowhere near ready to fulfil.

It is now the Chelsea way for coaches to simply be part of the football structure — a cog within a bigger wheel of upper management and multiple sporting directors — but that works only if you leave the coach to coach.

At a club with a global presence such as Chelsea, the position demands much more than ability on the training ground — the head coach/manager needs to fill the office with charisma because they must manage the expectation of the supporters and deal with an insatiable media.

Every word matters and Rosenior, just like Maresa before him, has said the wrong thing too often. But that is down to his inexperience. Managing Hull and Strasbourg does not, and cannot, prepare you for managing Chelsea.

Former owner Abramovich hired big-hitters such as Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Antonio Conte and Thomas Tuchel for that reason. He wanted big characters with track records to match. Right now, the new Chelsea seem to want none of that. They want shiny new forwards with potential, but are prepared to make economies on goalkeepers and coaches.

Rosenior embodies that two-tier approach, and both he and his team are suffering because of it.