Monday’s Group D clash at Euro 2020 was meant to be a chance for Scotland to dazzle after a 23-year absence from major tournaments.
With the Czech Republic leading 1-0 thanks to his first-half glancing header and Scotland battling furiously to get back into a match they’d been dominating, a blocked shot in the Czech defensive third spun kindly towards the halfway line.
Marshall back-pedalled, but was unable get a hand on it, ending up a crumpled heap in the net.
The first goal was a cross and header from him, the second goal was something out of this world.
Schick, only 25 years old, has been one to watch in European football for a while and at the Bundesliga’s Bayer Leverkusen, he’s living up to his long-mooted potential.
He instead went to Roma, but had a miserable couple of seasons — scoring just five times in 46 Serie A matches — until RB Leipzig picked him up on loan in 2019.
He’s impressed this term, scoring nine in 29, but all the while proving himself to be a handful and inevitably drawing two defenders in an attempt to nullify his influence.
While the Scots lacked cohesion and accuracy in the first half, you felt it was because they were trying to do everything at 200 miles per hour, whipped up by the weight of 23 years of annual failure, and the pressure of a hungry nation finally back on the big stage.
The 1970s anthem “Yes Sir, I can Boogie” was being whistled, hummed or roared around the city; T-shirts were on sale with that phrase emblazoned while flags were sold with “No Scotland, No Party.” With 3,000 people packed into the Fan Zone on Glasgow Green and 12,000 inside Hampden, the nation was united behind Clarke’s team.
The Euros have enjoyed a tapestry of wondrous agenda-setting strikes — Marco van Basten’s volley on the turn from a ridiculous angle in 1988, Antonin Panenka’s penalty in 1976, Ronnie Whelan’s thunderbolt in 1988, Xherdan Shaqiri’s overhead kick in 2016 and, of course, Paul Gascoigne’s against Scotland in 1996.
“Sometimes a football match doesn’t go your way.” The tournament is in its infant stages and Scotland can still leave a legacy for the next generation, but for the 12,000 fans in the ground they will tell their grandchildren in years to come they were at Hampden Park on June 14.