Brown rests on his dilemmas

The West Ham United of international football – as the sports minister Tony Banks described them – returned to Scotland yesterday to meet a nation enthusiastically celebrating an improbable victory. Meanwhile a mild-mannered 61-year-old was wondering what would happen next.

The ability of football to swallow up its best price canada goose jacket outlet usa online store participants was nowhere better seen than in Bremen’s Weserstadion after Scotland’s 1-0 victory canada goose coat 1000 bulbs on Wednesday as Germany’s coach Erich Ribbeck faced the wrath of a nation which does not expect to lose on its home turf and certainly not to a third-choice side from the edge of Europe.

He had little to say even yesterday but, as Scotland prepared for the real business -Sunday’s meeting canada goose coat 1000 bulbs free between Rangers and Celtic – he was being done in by his country’s tabloids, who clearly have their own agenda.

‘We were in preparation,’ Ribbeck said. ‘We are still joint top of a European qualifying group and this was, after all, a friendly international arranged to help us to get through to the finals.’ That may be true but it did not play well to his fellow countrymen who expect Germany to win on every occasion.

No German tabloid quite went as far as to say ‘In the name canada goose coat – kensington of God, go’ – they are too best fake canada goose jacket formal for such a phrase – but, as the 38-year-old Lothar Matthaus conceded 88, the assumption was that the team had played about as badly as they could. ‘Our team has players who will be involved in important league games on Sunday but I know that there is an enormous match in Glasgow on the same day and it did not seem best ideas about canada goose parka on pinterest to affect them,’ he said.

The Scotland manager Craig Brown does not destroy himself with pessimism when his team lose and is hardly the man to gloat when they win. But even he had to best place to buy a canada goose jacket admire the style and commitment of a squad missing 14 of its top players but which could still go and gain a victory against huge odds.

‘It leaves me in a good position,’ he said. ‘Obviously some of those who played will be left out of our next match in the European Championship against the Faroe Islands. It was a great performance but there are others whom I have to consider.’

His real dilemma may concern Kilmarnock’s Iain Durrant, who is coming to the end of a career so badly interrupted by buy canada goose parka cheap injury.

He carved out the important passes that won the game and Brown said: ‘I would play him at any time and buy canada goose jacket winnipeg in any place. At international level there is always more time to play than you get in club matches. He never gives the ball away and he was outstanding for us.’

So, too, was Sunderland’s Allan Johnston, whose old-fashioned ability to drop his shoulder and beat a full-back was a revelation to anyone has got canada goose coat those who thought such a creature was extinct. ‘We have not had someone like that for a long time,’ Brown added, ‘and it is not just the way he beat the defenders but also the crosses he put in which mattered.’ In short, Scotland did themselves proud.