Some reaction to earlier events in Seattle.

Colum Fordham has his say: “ One-sided this may have been and Morocco are technically on another planet but if Scotland show the resolve they’ve played with in the last ten minutes, they might be able to hang on and scrape a point. My favourite Scotland player Andy Robertson has hit a few decent through balls and one good cross.

“Here in Naples, the locals will be gunning for McTominay but he has barely seen the ball. Hopeful he’ll show a bit of his Napoli form in the second half. A shout out to my Scottish friend and diehard Scotland fan Alan.”

As does Kari Tulinius: “Morocco look better this time around than they did in Qatar, which probably means they’ll go out in the round of 32 to Sweden or Japan, because international football is silly like that. But if logic prevails, they’ll be a fearsome opponent to whoever’s in their quarter of the bracket. Bouaddi, El Aynaoui and Ounahi is a really strong midfield.”

Steven Grundy gets in touch: “Very difficult to fathom what Scotland’s plan is. We’re getting torn to shreds. Why is Gannon-Doak not playing? Also, why is McTominay anonymous again?

“Admittedly, we looked a bit better in the last 5 minutes of the second half. But Clarke needs a Tuchel-style team talk and to tell his team that, somehow, we still have a chance of getting something.”

And a gallery from this game, too.

Glory days, to quote a famous American on a huge day for the USMNT. Here’s the best pics.

45+4 min: Morocco the team awaiting the break now? Their earlier dominance has abated, that’s for sure.

45+3 min: A roar greets Scotland’s best football of the game, Tierney having two shots saved. There’s a VAR look at a challenge on Ferguson but nothing doing.

45+2 min: Scotland looking better. Adams almost gets to a Patterson ball then Robertson smashes in a cross and McGinn can only deflect behind. Still: better.

45 min: Morocco may feel they should have had more from the half. Five minutes are added on.

44 min: McGinn is fouled by the touchline. Ferguson’s free-kick is excellent and hurried away by a relieved Moroccan defence. McGinn has turned up the hustle and knocks over Mazraoui.

43 min: Saibari’s run is halted. Scotland holding a little firmer than before. The possession stats of 38-62% seem generous; no shots yet from Scotland.

41 min: Steve Clarke can be heard on the pitchside mics. He doesn’t sound happy. His team are hanging on for half-time.

40 min: From a free-kick, Robertson’s ball into the corner finds Hanley offside.

38 min: Some Diaz wizardry pulls a host of Scotland defenders all over the place. Eventually they get the ball clear, somehow, quantity if not quality showing.

37 min: Saibari blazes over but there was surely a foul when McTominay was tripped by the prone El Khannous.

35 min: Saibari and El Khannous link, sending Mazraoui to the line. The passing moves from this team are excellent, the highest class. Scotland can’t live with them.

33 min: McGinn and Christie offer a glimmer of a passing move but then Ferguson is loose in the next pass. Away go Morocco, the Scottish fans booing Hakimi’s every touch, and he’s getting plenty of them.

31 min: Peter Oh gets in touch: “Ismael Saibari not only just won the league with PSV, he was also voted Eredivisie player of the year. His stunner and total football flair are infusing a bit of classic 70s Scotland v Netherlands flavour to this match.”

Niall Mullen does too: “Is there anything more offensive in this World Cup than the music during the hydration breaks? Each song guaranteed to be on rotation in the worst pub in town.”

30 min: Diaz and Saibari link up, and Ounahi has time and space to shoot but smashes over.

29 min: The Tartan Army seem to have wilted. Not much noise from them.

27 min: We resume with Bounou launching the ball into the Scottish half. They can deal with that stuff, less so the passing football that the new Morocco have shown off. One positive for Scotland is that this is not a team full of goals; certainly not the case at AfCon.

25 min: Thomas Gray gets in touch: “Scotland were camped in my hometown, Santa Fe, NM, for their preparation of the 1986 World Cup. The team had a small clinic with our youth club team. Talk about learning what a player really was. I remember seeing how hard they could smash the ball, and that with all their muscularity, they also had an incredible touch. I have a nice polaroid (look it up, kids) of me and Archie Knox, the assistant coach. Naturally, the real gaffer couldn’t be bothered with snot nosed brats...”

The gaffer moved to Manchester later that year…

24 min: A hydration/advertising break awaits. First, the free-kick, from Ferguson, smashed clear by Mazraoui. The boos signify the break has arrived. In the stands: Pep Guardiola is seen as Don’t Stop Believing plays on the PA. A message for all Scots there.

23 min: Scotland try to gain a foothold, and there’s howls when Adams is pulled back. Issa Diop, former Hammer, is booked for a cynical pull-back.

22 min: Justin Kavanagh’s back in touch: “I think Scotland fans of a certain vintage might be having flashbacks to 1978. All that’s missing are those gorgeous red sashes across the shirts of the team in all white.”

21 min: Tony Hughes has lost heart already: “We have to be realistic here. I’ve followed Scotland since the 1970s and if there’s one thing you learn it’s that when it matters, Scotland usually cannot get it done. Now that’s often because we’re up against a much better team, like we are tonight, but we’ve seen this game play out a million times.
This game should finish 0-4 or something like that.”

Hanley, at least, deals well with a corner, at the cost of another corner. McTominay heads away the next, and Gunn makes another – easier – save from Hakimi, who has the freedom of Massachusetts at the moment.

18 min: Angus Gunn to Scotland’s rescue when Hakimi makes his through on the overlap. His foot, his dangling foot, stopped the ball from dribbling in. Pat Jennings-style use of the feet.

17 min: Scotland continue to struggle to hold the ball. Their vaunted midfielders can barely get a touch though McGinn at least gets stuck in. Patterson comes forward and gets a tough challenge. McTominay can’r seem to find a blue shirt.

16 min: Fin gets in touch: “To be fair to Hanley he wasn’t the quickest at his peak. He moved with the grace of a wardrobe when he filled in for my club in League One a season ago, so he can’t be expected to get out in time now. That’s on Clarke.”

Hanley did OK against Haiti but this is another level.

14 min: An oasis of calm as Scotland try to pass the ball around. It’s launched and Adams must chase it in the loose. That’s a thankless task. The Torino man will be asked to do lots of chasing today, mostly of shadows if this continues.

12 min: Saibari is causing all types of problems and Hakimi, the danger man, is let go on one of his overlaps. The ball is hacked clear. The star man – of a team of stars – has the run of his flank.

1o min: It could have been two. Christie loses the ball, perhaps fouled, Ounahi fizzing the ball across goal. Saibari and Diaz just failed to read it. The ball is cleared with anguish; this could get ugly.

9 min: Saibari looked to take a knock as the latest Moroccan attack took shape but he soon enough runs it off. He’s headed for Bayern Munich from PSV. The Moroccan fans are making the loudest noise and the Tartan Army are being drowned out. Just like their team.

7 min: A first Scotland attack, launched by McGinn. Adams and Christie can’t win the loose ball. Morocco did not look too convincing in defence, though we are told they lost one of their last 50 matches.

5 min: That five at the back did not do much in the way of locking the back door for the Scots. Morocco look so comfortable, just as they did against Brazil.

4 min: Well, to quote Graham Taylor, this is a test. Scotland will need to hold on to the ball far better than that. And defend better, too.

3 min: Brahim Diaz, such a clever player, played in Saibari, and so the quickest goal of the tournament was scored. Scotland caught napping.

The VAR team do not smile into the cameras. That gimmick has been sidelined after this misadventure.

Guess who’s coming to dinner in the Brooklyn apartment housing ITV’s broadcast.

Flower of Scotland is first of the anthems, and it’s a raucous rendition. Foxboro sounds like Murrayfield or Hampden on an evening kick-off. Steve Clarke is singing it with pride. It’s a spine tingler.

Morocco go next with Cherifian Anthem, their national song, and it’s not much less loud. It finishes with a guttural roar. We’re ready and set.

Alistair Connor gets in touch: “I have a daughter living in Scotland, and my wife is from Morocco. That makes these teams my third and fourth, because I’m from New Zealand and I have French nationality. Do you think one or two of my teams might do OK?”

So does Paul Griffin: “Scotland v Morocco. A beautiful mountainous nation, with a history of fierce resistance to central control, and a tribal heritage that lingers to this day, with unresolved anger towards the conduct of its more powerful colonialist neighbour, versus Scotland.”

The teams take to the field in Boston, where those clouds have dispersed. A blue sky greets them. It’s a sea of blue and red as Shakira blares.

There’ll be a round of applause in the 76th minute for Donny Strathie.

Via the BBC: Friends and family of a 76-year-old Scotland fan who died at a hotel in Boston plan to remember him with a minute’s applause.

Long-serving Tartan Army member Donny Strathie, from Grangemouth, collapsed at the Boston Norwood Hampton Inn on Sunday.

The fixture against Morocco on Friday would have been his first time at a Scotland World Cup game.

Steve Clarke spoke to ITV: “A few rotations just to freshen it up. We’re going to need a big shift tonight so it’s good to get some fresh faces in. Someone like Ben [Gannon Doak] coming off the bench can be really valuable in the second half.

“Morocco are one of the favourites for the tournament. They’ll be in the last four again. We have to be as good as we can be with and without the ball. It’s a big ask, but they’re ready.”

Doug Stratton gets in touch: “That Joe Jordan quote in the shirts (21:57) has got me in bits. 1978 was my first World Cup, and I genuinely believed - briefly- that Scotland would always be there, and always be competitive. Just the thought, now, that we might make it out of the group stage, at last, almost fifty years later…. Ach, I’m done.”

So does Kieron O’Hara: “As you correctly pointed out in your blog, Scotland have never exited the group stage via the front door so it would be historic if they managed it now. However, I’m not sure anyone has yet pointed out that, if the finals of the 1970s had been run on the same group tiebreak rules as 2026, Scotland would have qualified in 1974 and 1978, in 1974 at the expense of Brazil, and in 1978 putting out the Netherlands.”

Team USA’s flying start continues. Here’s Alexander Abnos’s report from Seattle.

Soccer won. That much could have been predicted before a temperate and bright Friday afternoon in the pacific northwest, in a rare match between two sides that can agree on that terminology.

This week, Roy Keane suggested John McGinn can look like a pub player at times. McGinn took those comments in good cheer when talking to ITV:

“I didn’t think what he said was that bad! He followed it up with something complimentary.

“He was right. I actually think the amount of games that I’m looking at a pub player is becoming less and less as I get older. “I try and not have as many games like that and be more consistent. I don’t think it was too bad. People were saying: ‘Did you see what he said? I just thought it was quite nice that they were talking about me!

“We’ve got nothing to fear going into these games. All the pressure is going to be on Morocco. All the pressure is going to be on Brazil. What we’ve realised now with the players going and playing abroad and playing at the highest level is a lot of it is about belief.

“If you think we’ve got to play Morocco and Brazil, two teams in the top ten in the world, we’re beat before you’ve started. I think the last few days have shown that this World Cup, anything’s possible. Hopefully we can probably surprise Morocco – but that won’t be a surprise to ourselves if we go and get three points on Friday.”

Justin Kavanagh gets in touch: “Thanks for the Joe Jordan pic and quote John, which has really cheered me up. I spent half the day (my birthday) in the dental chair having knocked out a tooth (don’t ask!). Big Joe was one of the great heroes of my youth; that quote is magical and looking in the mirror now doesn’t feel quite so devastating.”

Morocco were Scotland’s final opponents at the France 1998 World Cup and 28 years later, they are reunited. Here’s the starting teams from Saint-Etienne.

Scotland: Jim Leighton; Jackie McNamara, Colin Hendry, David Weir, Tommy Boyd; Craig Burley, Paul Lambert, John Collins, Christian Dailly; Gordon Durie, Kevin Gallacher.

Morocco: Driss Benzekri; Abdelilah Saber, Lahcen Abrami, Noureddine Naybet; El Moustafa Hadji, Smahi Triki, Gharib Amzine, Youssef Chippo, Tahar El Khalej; Abdeljilil Hadda, Salaheddine Bassir.

Mary Waltz gets in touch: “How can Scotland not be everyone’s second team? The fans. Amazing. Singing at the Red Sox game, marching down the streets of Boston with their bagpipes.”

Scotland’s switch to three/five man defence is no surprise. The inclusion of Nathan Patterson at right wing back instead of Aaron Hickey will turn heads, however. There have been no reports of a Hickey fitness, albeit his minutes are typically managed after a significant injury that saw him miss more than a year at Brentford. Hickey was short of his best against Haiti and received a yellow card, with those elements perhaps the simple explanation for this switch.

The exact shape of Scotland’s midfield will be intriguing. Ryan Christie plays in a deeper role for Bournemouth than typically for Scotland. Christie, one of three changes to the starting XI, is likely to be used to support Che Adams in attack.

Scotland’s team shirts are embroidered inside the neck with a message from Joe Jordan. “I came from a small place and set out in my life and career to go the furthest I could,” it reads. “For me that was playing for my country in World Cups.”

Scotland look to be 5-4-1, or even 4-5-1. Morocco will again play 4-2-3-1, by the looks of it.

Ally McCoist, who scored the winner for Scotland against Switzerland at Euro 96, is wandering around the media centre in Boston wearing his country’s strip from that very era. Scotland were denied a place in the knock-out stage of that tournament on goal difference (or, as far as Scots are concerned, because David Seaman let a Patrick Kluivert shot through his legs at Wembley as England beat the Netherlands 4-1).

There are shades of 1996 around Scotland’s scenario here. A narrow win over Haiti leaves Steve Clarke’s team with at least the possibility of being in a goal difference scrap for the last 32. Scotland could almost certainly avoid that anxiety with the claiming of a point from this game against a hotly-tipped Moroccan team. Morocco are rightly the heavy favourites. Scotland have to prove the cliche true in showing they are better as the underdog. Easier said than done.

Three changes for Scotland: Kieran Tierney, Nathan Patterson and Ryan Christie wil start with Aaron Hickey, Ben Gannon-Doak and Lawrence Shankland on the bench. That suggests a formation change. Morocco are unchanged from the Brazil game.

With the USA team winning well against Australia, feels like all three host teams will go through. The hosts in 2010 and 2022 didn’t get through the groups but good for business, right? Nice piece from the excellent Joe Callaghan.

In putting himself out front and centre Marsch has, arguably, given his players the room to feel their way into the roles, before meeting the moment. Out there in the rest of the world, some may already be tiring of Marsch’s excesses but Canada is revelling in his leadership. Thursday was both catharsis and crisis and Marsch led the country through both and left windmilling his arms for more.

Tony Barr gets in touch with a question: “D’you think there’s a lot of ‘we mustn’t underestimate the Scots’ doing the rounds on the Moroccan TV pre-game chat, or is that peculiar to English pundits when your lot are up against lower opposition?

”Either way, I like to think the Moroccan Alan Shearer (Hamdallah?) is telling someone right now that Scotland ‘ iinahum laysuu ‘aghbia’’.”

Weather watch: it’s *just* 26 degrees in Foxboro, with some clouds in the sky. What counts as a heatwave in Largs, to put it another way.

The transfer market never stops and Ayyoub Bouaddi has been linked with just about everybody since his showing against Brazil. He’s a Lille player at present, but unlikely to be one beyond the closure of the window.

Ouahbi was referring to Bouaddi’s performance in a 1-0 victory against Ancelotti’s Madrid in October 2024 on the day he turned 17, which ended with Lille’s supporters singing happy birthday to him on the pitch.

That ensured that every big club in Europe has been tracking his progress since. Arsenal are in preliminary talks to sign a player believed to be valued at about £70m by Lille; Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich are thought to have registered an interest and Liverpool had scouts watching him on Saturday.

Against Brazil, it was noticeable the Morocco fans were significantly louder. That should make the atmosphere one to remember in Foxboro.

Steve Clarke is not a man to overstate things and he was typically realistic in his assessment of the Moroccans.

“We are under no illusion about the size of the task. I feel Morocco are a really, really good side. They reached the last four of the last World Cup and I have a feeling this Morocco team is slightly better than that, so that gives you an idea of the task ahead. They have power, they have pace, they have little bits of skill that can open up a game. For me they are the real deal, a top side. We will have to be at our very best to compete.

“It is a big challenge for us. We give them a lot of respect. We expect they will probably have more of the ball, more possession. We have to make sure that when we have the ball we can be a threat to Morocco.”

Scott McTominay did not have his best game against Haiti but he remains his team’s key man.

You need only walk in the vicinity of Hampden Park to learn of McTominay’s standing as a Scotland player. Kenny Dalglish and Denis Law have never been depicted on portraits on the gable end of terraced flats close to the national stadium. McTominay, a player born in England, produced such an iconic moment against Denmark last November that it will sit as an artistic reference point for ever more.

Paul MacInnes has been out and about with the Scotland fans.

Just 10 days since they first began arriving in New England, Scotland fans have managed to bring yet another nation under their thrall. Carrying a letter of support from FC Cologne, the last place to fall for the Scots two years ago, they have charmed, amused and fascinated the locals in Boston and beyond. Following the antics of the Scottish fans, their discovery of tailgating or their dancing at the baseball, appears to have become an American pastime, with clips ubiquitous on everyone’s social media feeds.