Portugal 2 Scotland 1

In a curious anomaly, none of Cristiano Ronaldo’s 900 goals had come against a team from Scotland. 

In four attempts, he’d never done what he does better than anyone else. Heading into the final minutes in Lisbon, it was time for the headline grabber supreme to set the record straight.

And yet. Steve Clarke was so close to buying some Nations League respite with a rare and credible point on Portuguese soil.

Scott McTominay’s 11th international goal had handed the Scots an unexpected lead which they retained at half-time.

Even when Angus Gunn allowed a long-range shot from birthday boy Bruno Fernandes to squirm through his grasp early in the second half, Clarke’s team appeared to hold their nerve.

This is a team becoming conditioned to late heartbreak, however. They lost to Hungary and then Poland in added time. And, when Ronaldo struck the upright with a header and Gunn clawed the ball off the line, you began to wonder if they might just survive this time.

A man who writes his own scripts, Ronaldo had other ideas. Nuno Mendes whipped in a wicked ball from the left, the ball took a horrible bounce into the path of the great narcissist and the outcome was both predictable and inevitable. He’d done it again.

When push comes to shove, Scotland have now won one game in the last 14. The positives on show against Portugal and Poland are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Bottom of their Nations League group with no points from two games, a trip to Croatia next month offers no real prospect of a turnaround. For Clarke, these are now dangerous days.

Call it stubborn, or loyal, arrogant even. Whatever motivated Scotland’s manager to pick the same starting XI which gifted three goals to Poland, it worked like a charm for 45 minutes.

It had to be McTominay who scored, because it usually is. A force of nature in a Scotland shirt, the midfielder has now claimed ten in his last 17 caps, a record Ronaldo would consider a decent haul.

There were no shortage of fans who groaned when they saw Kenny McLean’s name in the line-up ahead of, say, Ryan Gauld. Clarke loves the ground McLean walks on, of course, and the under-appreciated Norwich City midfielder vindicated his loyalty with a delicious curling cross which enticed McTominay to drift in behind Ruben Dias, blind-siding a world-class defender.

Diogo Costa barely bothered trying to stop the bullet header which fizzed into the roof of the net. It was the first goal scored by a Scotland player in Lisbon since Paul Sturrock in November 1981.

To win games like these, a team needs to ride its luck at times. An ironic cheer came from the ranks of the Tartan Army after half an hour when the outstanding AC Milan winger Rafael Leao allowed the ball to run under his foot and out of play. It was the first thing he’d done wrong in a start to the game which had seen him terrorise the over-worked Tony Ralston.

Ryan Christie’s efforts to double up and provide some support for the right back against Portugal’s No 17 were welcome, but futile.

The winger cut in from the left and smacked a fizzing shot towards Gunn’s right-hand post, the keeper throwing himself down brilliantly to turn it round the post. He could have done with that when Poland finally levelled last week.

As the home team spurned chance after chance in the first half in Lisbon, you could almost see substitute Ronaldo, arms crossed on the bench, burning a hole in the back of manager Roberto Martinez’s head.

Inevitably, the call came after a series of wasted opportunities. When a team needs a goal, it’s always useful to be able to call on a superstar with 131 to his name at this level. 

Scotland’s last noteworthy win on foreign soil over a nation in the current top 20 of the FIFA rankings had come against Croatia in Zagreb in June 2013.

Hopes of pulling this one off pretty much ended when Manchester United skipper Fernandes levelled with the softest of goals nine minutes after the restart.

On a night when he actually made some very decent saves, Gunn blotted his copybook when he got a glove to the playmaker’s 20-yard strike low at his left-hand post but couldn’t keep it out. Reminiscent of Germany’s first goal in the 5-1 rout at Euro 2024, the shot was awkward and curling. Slapping the ground in exasperation, Gunn knew he should have done better.

Like most of the goals this Scotland team concede these days, it felt needless and preventable. The final half hour now threatened to be a test of endurance for a shellshocked team in white.

And yet, at a time when they could have crumpled and folded like a pack of cheap cards, they confounded everyone by rallying.

Two penalty appeals in three minutes were born of desperation rather than genuine grievance. Billy Gilmour fell to the deck, replays showing that Ruben Neves had pulled off a fine challenge. A handball appeal against Nuno Mendes was given equally short shrift by the Italian referee.

Even so, when McTominay cracked a thumped drive into the arms of Costa from 20 yards out, Scotland were enjoying their best spell in the game for some time. However, it all proved a mirage in the end.

The arrival of Tommy Conway and Gauld brought fresh legs but no real respite as Portugal ramped it up for a big finish

There was redemption for Gunn when he produced a tremendous goal-stopping save from substitute Joao Felix after a ridiculously nonchalant back-heel from Ronaldo.

Making himself big, it was a tremendous piece of shot stopping and, as the game headed for a frantic finale, the Norwich keeper pulled off one big save after another.

He threw himself low to the left to keep out a diving header, again from Felix. He clawed the ball off the line — while being challenged by the lurking Felix — when Ronaldo’s header back across goal bounced off the inside off the upright to general disbelief.

Ultimately, you can’t keep a great man down. When the winner came, it just had to be Ronaldo. He wouldn’t have it any other way.