Scotland - 1 Germany - 1 As was proved in the recent European Cup final between Milan and Juventus, even at the highest level a match is capable of providing the bad and the ugly along with the good. Here a Germany team featuring seven of the players who competed in the 2002 World Cup final showed they could combine all that with the indifferent as well.
Nevertheless, after so much despair in Scotland about Berti Vogts's underachievement with the national team, this represented a triumph of the will for the manager and his squad.
Personified by their leader Paul Lambert, Scotland roused some spirit many had feared had been suffocated by miserable performances against New Zealand and the Faroe Islands.
Much attention will now focus on whether Lambert (33) will still be an international when Scotland go to Germany for the return fixture in September in Dortmund. His decision will be announced in August.
For Germany this was more like a triumph of the wilful. Personified by Michael Ballack, Germany seemed to have no real interest in adding to their one-goal advantage even though victory would have meant a decisive step towards qualification for Euro 2004. Cynicism in international football has been gradually erased over the last decade, but on a summer's day in Glasgow, Germany proved it is not dead.
It meant it was difficult to disagree with the assessment of the Germany manager, Rudi Völler, that the best thing about the afternoon was the atmosphere inside Hampden Park.
So it was Scotland, not Ballack or the slightly livelier Bernd Schneider, who delivered the one glimpse of bright invention on the pitch. Trailing to Fredi Bobic's unchallenged first-half header, Scotland equalised with 21 minutes to go thanks to the quick thinking of Colin Cameron and the composure of Kenny Miller.
Awarded a free kick following a handball by Christian Worns, Cameron saw the relative disarray in the German back line and nudged the ball forward to Miller and he scored with a low shot that beat Oliver Kahn to his right.
To say Hampden went wild would be wrong. It went wilder.
An advertising hoarding read Neue energie but for all Lambert's prompting and Cameron's scuffling, Worns, Carsten Ramelow and Arne Friedrich neutralised it smoothly. The standard of creative football from both sides was poor. Then in the 22nd minute Germany broke away, Schneider finding Torsten Frings neatly. Frings's cross was badly judged by Steven Pressley and Bobic's header was a formality.
Scottish heads could have dropped at that but they didn't. At half-time Vogts said he told his players to "take a drink, relax". Miller's moment, allied to Germany's lackadaisical approach and Worns's 82nd-minute aberration 10 yards out, justified Vogts's self-belief.
Many observers had considered it self-delusion but Vogts was able to talk about "satisfaction" afterwards. After so much criticism it would have been easy for Vogts to be smug but he was magnanimous and spoke of the long-term project of "reconstruction" in Scottish football. In the short term Scotland remain in contention in the group.
Guardian Service
SCOTLAND: Douglas, Ross (McNamara 74), Pressley, Webster, Naysmith, Devlin (Rae 60), Lambert, Cameron, Dailly, Crawford, Miller (Thompson 90). Subs Not Used: Neil Alexander, Graham Alexander, Gray, Wilkie. Booked: Devlin, Dailly, Pressley, Thompson. Goals: Miller 69.
GERMANY: Kahn, Friedrich, Worns, Ramelow, Rau (Freier 56), Schneider (Kehl 86), Jeremies, Ballack, Frings, Klose (Neuville 74), Bobic. Subs Not Used: Rost, Rehmer, Hinkel, Kuranyi. Booked: Frings, Freier, Ballack. Goal: Bobic 23.
Referee: Domenico Messina (Italy).
