Scotland's history at the World Cup has been marred by a series of unfortunate events and encounters with formidable opponents. One of the most significant bogeymen in Scotland's World Cup history is Carlos Borges, a Uruguayan winger who scored a hat-trick against Scotland in 1954. Borges' remarkable story includes a heroic act on a steamship in 1963, where he saved a three-year-old boy from drowning. Another notable bogeyman is Danaeifard, an Iranian defender who played against Scotland in 1978. Danaeifard's team was in a state of turmoil, with the country on the brink of revolution. He and his teammates were subjected to death threats and were forced to navigate a complex web of politics and propaganda.
Since their first attempt in 1954, there's always been some kind of misfortune lurking in the shadows for Scotland at World Cup s. Along the way, there's been a few bogeymen, characters that few in Scotland had heard until they helped detonate the dream.
The first of those bogeymen was Carlos Borges. He was a dynamic little winger and a prolific goalscorer, a graduate of the Penarol academy in Montevideo who was playing senior football at 14. On June 19, 1954, in Scotland's second game of their first World Cup, Borges scored a hat-trick for Uruguay in a 7-0 win in Basel. To this day, it's Scotland's biggest ever defeat in international football.
To say they were unprepared is putting it mildly. In the heat, the Scots were wearing old-style boots, heavy cotton shirts and shorts that were ill-suited to the conditions. It was a shambles, recalled Tommy Docherty, who was in the Scotland team that day. Docherty was marking a guy called Juan Schiaffino, a player he knew virtually nothing about.
Nobody told me how good he was. Had Scotland done a modicum of research they might have learned a thing or two. Not only were Uruguay reigning world champions, Schiaffino was one of their superstars, a goalscorer in the decisive match against Brazil in the 1950 finals. Scotland's 7-0 defeat by Uruguay in 1954 remains their biggest ever in international football.
Borges was the main man against Scotland, though. A tormenting presence; quick, relentless and two-footed. He scored his hat-trick inside an hour, then scored again in a 4-2 win over the England of Stanley Matthews, Nat Lofthouse and Tom Finney. The winger went on to win a Copa America in 1956 and a Copa Libertadores in 1960, scoring the first ever goal in the competition.
For that, and for one other remarkable reason, he's remembered as a hero in his homeland. In July 1963, Borges boarded a steamship called the Ciudad de Asuncion, built in Scotland in 1929. The vessel, with 400 people on board, travelled daily across the Rio de la Plata from Montevideo to Buenos Aires. Around 3am it crashed into the remains of a sunken Greek freighter and began to list.
Shortly after there was an explosion in the engine room. The ship was going down. Passengers began jumping into the river. Borges was on deck as the tragedy developed.
A woman recognised him and threw her three-year-old son into his arms, before sliding away to her death. Save him for me, she shouted. The lifeboats were crowded. With the boy in his arms, Borges scrambled on to a sheet of wood and drifted in the water for 11 hours until rescued by an Argentine ship.
The following day he was there when the lad was reunited with his father. The mother was one of 70 fatalities. Scotland's draw with Iran came in front of a paltry but irate crowd. Scotland were still reeling from a hiding by Peru at the 1978 World Cup when they rolled up to Cordoba to play Iran in front of a crowd of just 7,938.
Manager Ally MacLeod didn't overdo the homework, and didn't seem to take any notice that the Iranians had won the Asian Cup in 1968, 1972 and 1976. They weren't bad. They'd lost their World Cup opener 3-0 to the Netherlands but put it down to being in awe of the Dutch. There was no danger of them being in awe of the Scots.
MacLeod's team led 1-0 through an own goal but, on the hour, Danaeifard took it round Archie Gemmill before beating Alan Rough at his near post. It was their first ever World Cup goal. It was MacLeod's nadir, a moment his reputation never recovered from. Failing to beat Iran was a monumental embarrassment and left Scotland needing a miracle against the Dutch which, of course, they almost achieved.
Danaeifard, a defender, played for Taj in Tehran. He'd won the first of his 17 caps only the year before. He, and others on that Iran team, have spoken about what their world looked like back then. Iran was in political turmoil, riots destabilising the land.
Security forces were coming down hard on protestors. The place was on the edge of revolution. Since the national football team was deemed a symbol of the Shah's regime - the Shah backed them to the hilt and used them as propaganda - Danaeifard and his team-mates were allegedly subjected to death threats by radicals. Protestors wanted to know if the players were pro Shah, the western-backed monarch, or pro-Ayatollah Khomeini, the fundamentalist Islamic cleric.
Danaeifard felt that the Shah's secret police had infiltrated their travelling party to the World Cup and was afraid to speak openly about anything. After the finals, he returned to Tehran and the Islamic Revolution. The Ayatollah was in charge now and he saw football as a symbol of western imperialism. The game suffered and Danaeifard headed to America where he played for the Tulsa Roughnecks for four years.
He was in the States when he heard of the death of a friend, a former team-mate and then-Iran captain, Habib Khabiri
Scotland World Cup Carlos Borges Danaeifard Iran Uruguay Football
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