In 1986, researchers came across a psychological phenomenon called the “reminiscence bump”. Adults over 40, they found, could give chapter and verse on the stuff that happened in their lives between the ages of 10 and 30.
Ask them what songs were in the top 40 when they were 12, 13 or 14 and they could rattle off titles, chart positions and the clothes Boy George wore on Top of the Pops. Recollections of their favourite teenage football games brought goal scorers, times of goals, sometimes the weather conditions.
Ask them what song was No.1 or who won the FA Cup when they were 32, and they might as well have undergone a full frontal lobotomy. They were clueless.
World Cups are a bit like that. The tournaments of our youth become the biggest and the best, while those more recent become a vague, insignificant blur.
There might be the odd “where were you when” moment. Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt. Roger Milla dancing round the corner flag like the oldest swinger up the Savoy. Over the piece, nothing has ever quite matched the dopamine high of watching Scotland at the World Cup as a teenager.
At that age, anything felt possible; even a place in the knock-out stage. Once the battle-hardened weariness and cynicism of the time-served football hack settled in, nothing would ever feel quite as fresh or as good as Spain ’82 or Mexico ’86 again.
Football feels pure and honest at that age because life has yet to rear up and slap you around the chops. Ignorance is a form of bliss.
The BBC theme tune to Argentina ’78 is still lodged in my mind. There are memories of the family gathered round the old, giant Radio Rentals telly in the corner of the living room watching that goal from Archie Gemmill against the Netherlands.
Images of Cesar Menotti, the nicotine-stained Argentina coach, smoking a fag on the touchline and Ally MacLeod with his head in his hands, feel as vivid as the opening credits of World Cup Grandstand.
The same applies to Spain ’82 where a world-class Scotland squad shipped two daft second-half goals to minnows New Zealand in a 5-2 win in the opening match. It cost them because, let’s be blunt on this, it always does.
The next game against Brazil was spent in the company of fellow cubs leaping around an old wooden scout hut in Linburn Road, Dunfermline. Driving past that site two years ago, the scout hut was no more, the troop relocated to another facility. Another little piece of childhood had been snatched away.
The celebrations which followed Dave Narey’s toe-poke into the postage-stamp corner that sunny evening were short lived. The rest of a 4-1 thumping to a flamboyant, brilliant, underachieving Brazil team was watched through the cracks of the fingers.
Willie Miller and Alan Hansen crashed into each other in the final game against the USSR and the team flew home early. Again.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of Mexico ’86 and my first – and last – piece of SFA merchandising tat. Purchased with 16th birthday money, it came from the old Goldbergs department store in Glasgow’s Candleriggs in the form of a canary yellow t-shirt with a blue lion rampant and a Scotland logo on the front. It seemed a good idea at the time.
Alex Ferguson was the manager and the squad were decent. Captain – and new Rangers manager – Graeme Souness had three European Cup medals with Liverpool.
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Steve Nicol had joined him on the podium in Rome two years earlier when they really should have come up against a Dundee United contingent conned out of a place in the final by a corrupt French referee in Rome. Four players – Miller, Alex McLeish, Gordon Strachan and Jim Leighton – had won Cup-Winners’ Cup medals with Aberdeen.
The game was up the minute Kenny Dalglish, Liverpool’s player-manager, withdrew in protest at Ferguson omitting Hansen – his double-winning captain – from the squad. His replacement was Steve Archibald, a striker who had just played for Barcelona in the European Cup final. Archibald was as close as Scotland ever came to a Lyndon Dykes in those days.
The yellow t-shirt was short-lived. It was barely out of the Goldbergs bag when Preben Elkjaer enjoyed the break of the ball to score the only goal of the opening game for Denmark.
Washed and ironed for the second game against West Germany, Strachan scored the opening goal then tried to straddle the advertising board in Queretaro.
By the time Rudi Voller and Klaus Allofs had turned the game on its head, the sweat stains which accompany Scotland at the World Cup were starting to show.
When Stevie Nicol missed that chance against a brutal Uruguay in the final game, it came off and went straight in the bin.
Italia ’90 began with a humiliating defeat to Costa Rica. Andy Roxburgh wrapped a tartan scarf around his neck and led the Scots to a rousing win over Sweden in Genoa before the tournament ended the way most of them do. In a loss to Brazil.
Speak to anyone who lived through those years and they will tell you exactly where they were when Craig Burley scored Scotland’s last goal at the World Cup finals (Ross’ Original Bar in Mitchell Street, since you ask).
It barely matters that Scotland’s record is abysmal. Like the charts on your 14th birthday, a first romance or the first foreign holiday, formative World Cups – good or bad – are memories we never let go of.
The soundtrack to our lives, they become our generational bookmarks. When Scotland were contesting six out of seven World Cups between 1974 and 1998, the nation routinely churned out world- class footballers.
Once the quality of player dropped off a cliff, memories of the good old days became precious artefacts. Souvenirs of a bygone age, the national football team became a tourist in its own past.
For the last 28 years, the Tartan Army have spent World Cups seething at pillocks down south chucking good lager around beer gardens on late-night news bulletins. Entire tournaments have been spent in Anyone But England t-shirts, praying for a penalty shoot-out to end the misery.
This World Cup is different. Scots fans turned up in New Jersey for that rousing 4-0 thrashing of Bolivia and felt, for once, like they were invited to the party. For the first time in decades, they get to slip behind the VIP rope and grab selfies with the elite.
Every game should feel like a national event. A chance for a new generation to watch, savour and wear the yellow t-shirt.
