GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - DECEMBER 20: Odsonne Edouard of Celtic celebrates after scoring their sides second goal during the William Hill Scottish Cup final match between Celtic and Heart of Midlothian at Hampden Park National Stadium on December 20, 2020 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
Record Sport’s Scott McDermott was ten years old when his family travelled to Italy for the 1990 World Cup, and the memory has never left him.
The sand on the beach in Rimini was, as he still recalls, like talcum powder, and Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” played on a big screen at a nearby amusement arcade.
His dad Billy carried a massive old-school video camcorder he had loaned from the local community centre, determined to capture every single moment of the trip.
His brother Ross and he wore pristine Italy home kits, complete with foot-less socks, while their mum quietly looked after the family every single day of that holiday.
Those small, vivid details have surfaced randomly in McDermott’s mind for 36 years, tied to what he considers the greatest family holiday they ever shared.
The family made a seven-hour coach journey from Rimini to Genoa for Scotland’s opening game against Costa Rica, arriving without tickets and relying on Billy’s gift of the gab to secure two from an Italian outside the Luigi Ferraris Stadium for £100.
Kids got in free, and somehow they ended up in the main stand’s posh seats, sitting immediately behind a brass band conductor whose white outfit Ross quietly ruined with a footprint across the back over the first 45 minutes.
Scotland lost that day to a goal from Juan Cayasso, whom McDermott would track down decades later for an interview, telling him directly that he had spoiled his big day.
The family stayed in Rimini for the Sweden match, watched it in a bar alongside Tartan Army supporters from a Stirling pub, and when Scotland won 2-1, they danced in the streets to the sound of honking car horns.
Scotland were eventually eliminated after losing to Brazil and failing to qualify from their group, ending what McDermott describes as the trip of a lifetime for his family.
His attempt to recreate those memories at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil ended before it began, when a call from his wife Debbie told him that her father Harry had died, sending him home on an EasyJet flight instead of a plane to Rio.
Sitting at a baggage carousel that day, a colleague named Michael Grant called to offer sympathy and told him, “You’ll get to another World Cup,” words that made McDermott well up given how unlikely it seemed.
Scotland had not qualified since 1998, and with others ahead of him in the pecking order at work, another World Cup felt genuinely out of reach at that painful moment.
Both of his parents passed away in 2024 within five months of each other, meaning neither lived to see him cover another World Cup tournament.
Saturday night in Boston, Massachusetts, changed everything, transporting McDermott back to Italy and making him feel, in his own words, like a ten-year-old again with the same nerves, excitement, pride, and exhilaration.
Instead of Costa Rica there was Haiti, instead of Andy Roxburgh there was Steve Clarke, and instead of Mo Johnston there was Lawrence Shankland, but the Tartan Army remained exactly the same.
John McGinn’s goal sealed Scotland’s first World Cup win since Italia 90, and in that moment McDermott could not stop thinking about his parents and everything they had given him by taking him to Rimini.
“That feeling I had in Boston? THEY gave me it by taking me to Rimini on that holiday — and I’ll be forever grateful,” he wrote, reflecting on what that long-ago trip truly meant.
He addressed every parent who brought their child to the stadium that night in Boston, suggesting that if the experience affects those kids the way Italia 90 affected him, there is no greater gift they could ever give.
There was, he noted, one significant difference between then and now — this time, Scotland actually won.
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