@davidyarrow

It’s not often that my home city of Glasgow, Scotland is the focus of world sport. But tonight it will be, when the National teams of Scotland and Ukraine meet in a World Cup eliminator. It was always a big game and now it is an historic game and the world will watch like perhaps never before. I have been to many World Cups, photographed a couple, had my Maradona moment and been to Hampden Park for over 40 World Cup qualifiers. But this evening will be very different to anything I have ever known. Tonight is not a binary situation for even the most patriotic of Scots; jubilation on victory or heartbreak on elimination. No, if Ukraine are victorious, they will be applauded off the park and there will be tears of joy. This has never happened before and will never perhaps happen again, but I do think Scots are emotionally intelligent enough to understand that we have a tiny cameo role tonight in a European tragedy on a shocking scale. I hope that I am proud of my team tonight, but for all Scots it’s far more important that we are proud of ourselves, our perspective and our behaviour. Tonight is not about us at all. It is all about our brave friends from Ukraine. The world is watching.