Craig Brown column: It's wrong to say Scotland have never got to the last 16 of Euros

Although Scots everywhere will rightly be disappointed at our failure to reach the last 16 of Euro 2020, saying we have never reached that stage before is a factual inaccuracy.

When I was assistant manager to Andy Roxburgh at Euro 92, a different format meant that only eight countries qualified for the finals of that tournament and we were one of them.

Only 16 teams reached the Euro 96 finals in England – when I was manager – and we were one of them.

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It was frustrating that we reached the finals this year and had the benefit of two home games at Hampden but lost both of them.

You should be expected to win your home games, although it would have helped if we had four times the crowd, which was restricted to a maximum of 12,000 due to coronavirus restrictions.

There was terrific support at the Croatia game however and they stayed at the end and were very supportive of the team.

I don’t think you fool the fans easily and the fans knew that the team had played to the best of their ability.

Most of the guys put in a shift but we were 20 per cent short of each of the Croatian players.

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