Marco Rossi

If Willie Miller was any more laid-back, he'd be horizontal. There's not really too much that puts him up or down. But this Scottish football legend, figuring prominently at the moment in BBC Scotland's Icons of Football television series, is getting excited. It's fair to say that's not his default position. As a radio pundit, he's not one for ranting and raving, shouting and screaming, but measured Miller might make an exception tonight if Scotland can boldly go where no other Scotland team has gone before and stay longer than three group games at a major tournament. Sixty-five-times capped by his country - and it would have been more had injury not intervened - Miller was one of the first players to be inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame.

THE fact that Hungary require an extraordinary turn of events to qualify for the knock-out round is not quite how their legions of followers anticipated Euro 2024 unfolding. Yet, none present in the MHPArena in Stuttgart tomorrow will ever blithely dismiss the achievement of simply competing at this level again. For fully three decades, a country credited with revolutionising the game in the 1950s with their prototype Total Football found itself in international exile, a perennial spectator whenever the great summer festivals began.

Switzerland are the international team Scotland aspire to be. A nation whose reliability at major tournaments is almost as consistent as the precision of their timekeeping. Before Euro 2024, a misapprehension took root amongst the Tartan Army. Germany would win Group A easily, leaving Scotland to fight for second and third place with a rejuvenated Hungary. The second game against Switzerland would be a repeat of the Scots' win at Euro '96. When the Swiss swept Hungary aside in their opening fixture, that began to look like a dangerous miscalculation. Given Scotland's display against Germany, it was an act of gross delusion.