Italian supporters can empathise by now.
Imagine holding your breath for 28 years, watching one World Cup after another pass by from a distance while your national team remains absent. Then, all at once, McTominay’s overhead kick rewrites the footballing history of a country and secures a ticket to America. Sooner or later, that kind of pent-up noise has to come out somewhere.
The occasion was Scotland v Haiti, the opening match in Group C.
The moment the stadium speakers begin Flower of Scotland, the anthem of the Tartan Army, ear protection starts to feel like a sensible precaution. Not only because 60,000 Scottish supporters arrived at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough and promptly gave the local crowd a lesson in what a football atmosphere can look and sound like.
The song does the rest.
By the first verse, most measuring devices seem to have given up. Not just a figure of speech. A World Cup is the kind of event measured from every conceivable angle. Noise is one of them.
During the Scottish anthem before the match against Haiti, a record fell. According to The Times, the crowd reached 125 decibels.
The equivalent of a jackhammer. Fireworks at close range.
Inside a semi-open stadium, where sound disperses quickly, it is an extraordinary reading. In its own way, more striking than McGinn’s goal, which delivered Scotland’s first World Cup win in 36 years.
The interesting part, physically and almost anthropologically, is that the record did not arrive in a moment of sudden euphoria. Not after a goal. Not after a save.
It came during a national anthem.
Of course, there is always someone singing out of tune, out of time, with more enthusiasm than precision. Still, some songs feel designed for collective performance more than others. With all due respect to every anthem — their appeal is personal, delicate — there are differences in force, in sheer acoustic weight. The adrenaline of La Marseillaise is not quite the same as Brazil’s marching rhythm.
And if the Scots are already among the loudest crowds in football when things turn festive and packed, Flower of Scotland sits in a category of its own.
Not Argentina lifting the World Cup. Not Grosso’s penalty. Not Zidane’s France lifting the trophy at home. Not in decibels.
Perhaps it should not come as a surprise.
When a song reaches back to something as foundational as the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, and finds space to accuse an old enemy of arrogance before gently suggesting they go home and think about it, singing along becomes tempting even for those with no connection to Scotland at all.
Just mind the neighbours.
No need for record-breaking noise.